US commercial crude oil inventories, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), fell by 10.6 million barrels from the week ended August 18 to the week ended August 25 of August, according to the latest weekly report on the state of oil from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). .
Crude stockpiles, excluding the SPR, stood at 422.9 million barrels on Aug. 25, the EIA report showed. Those inventories stood at 433.5 million barrels on Aug. 18 and 418.3 million barrels on Aug. 26, 2022, according to the EIA report.
There were 349.5 million barrels of crude in the SPR on August 25, the report said, noting that this figure stood at 348.9 million barrels on August 18 and 450.0 million of barrels on August 26, 2022.
“At 422.9 million barrels, U.S. crude inventories are about three percent below the five-year average for this time of year,” the EIA noted in the report.
Total motor gasoline inventories fell by 0.2 million barrels from last week and are about five percent below the five-year average for this time of year, it said the report, adding that inventories of finished gasoline rose while inventories of blending components declined last week.
The report revealed that distillate fuel inventories rose by 1.2 million barrels last week and noted that they are about 15 percent below the five-year average for this time of the year Propane/propylene inventories rose 3.2 million barrels from last week and are 21 percent above the five-year average for this time of year, the report said.
Total commercial oil inventories fell by 8.0 million barrels last week, according to the report.
Inflows from U.S. crude refineries averaged 16.6 million barrels per day in the week ended Aug. 25, the report said, adding that it was 173,000 barrels per day less than the average of the previous week.
“Refineries operated at 93.3 percent of their operating capacity last week,” the report said.
US crude imports averaged 6.6 million barrels per day last week and decreased by 316,000 barrels per day from the previous week, the EIA report revealed.
“Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.8 million barrels per day, up 12.1 percent from the same four-week period last year,” the report said .
Total supplies over the past four weeks averaged 21.2 million barrels per day, according to the report, which noted that this was up 6.1 percent from the same period last year. .
“Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline products supplied averaged 9.0 million barrels per day, up 1.8 percent from the same period last year,” the report noted.
“The distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.7 million barrels per day over the past four weeks, down 1.0 percent from the same period last year. The fuel product for aircraft supplied increased by 0.8 percent compared to the same four-week period last year,” he added.
In a report sent to Rigzone late Tuesday, ahead of the release of the EIA’s latest weekly oil situation report, Macquarie strategists revealed they were forecasting US crude inventories to fall 8.8 million barrels for the week ended August 25.
“This follows a draw of 6.1 million barrels for the week ended August 18, with the total balance of US crude slightly looser than we had anticipated,” strategists said in the report
“From the refineries, we are looking for a moderate drop in crude oil runs (-0.2 MBD). Among net imports, we look for significantly higher exports in nominal terms (+0.5 MBD) and lower week-on-week imports (-0.2 MBD); on the former, we note that the export schedule could inject some degree of volatility into this week’s statistics,” the strategists added.
“Based on the implied internal supply (prod. + adj.), we are looking for a slight weekly increase (+0.1 MBD). To complete the picture, we anticipate another small increase in SPR inventory during the week (+0.6 million barrels),” the strategists continued.
In the report, Macquarie strategists noted that at Cushing, their refinery/pipeline model called for a draw of 1.75 million barrels this week.
“Among products, we look for distillate (-1.0 million barrels) with builds in gasoline (+0.5 million barrels) and jet (+0.3 million barrels),” strategists said.
“We model implied demand for these three products at ~14.5 MBD compared to last week’s 14.4 MBD and a trailing four-week average of 14.4 MBD,” they added.
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