CRUDE OIL INVENTORIES WEEK ENDING 12/17/2021

Dec 22, 2021

Thomas Thornton

Crude: -4.715M

Cushing: 1.463M

Gasoline: 5.533M

Distillates: 0.396M

Great report this week. A reminder again, that December 31st is the tax assessment date for barrels on hand for oil companies. They usually try and get rid of as much as they can at the end of December. We generally see bigger crude draws and bigger gasoline builds in the last half of December, so this is not abnormal to see gasoline stocks rise this much. Imports were down -277K from last week (1.939M barrels on the week ) and exports were down -766K (5.362M barrels on the week). We had an SPR release of 2.534M barrels that were taken out of the SPR and added back into commercial crude stocks. At 423.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil
inventories are about 8% below the five-year average for this time of year. Refineries operated at 89.6% of their operable capacity last week on par with last week. Over 90% is still our goal to see refinery stocks really get a boost. Even with this build, total motor gasoline stocks are still about 4% below the five-year average for this time of year. Distillate fuel inventories are about 8% below the five-year average for this time of year. Propane inventories decreased by 0.8 million barrels last week and are about 8% below the five-year average for this
time of year. This is the time of year when we usually see large draws, but the weather has been rather mild in states that depend heavily on propane for heat, this is why such a marked improvement percentage-wise with this draw. Let us see how this winter progresses. I’m still a bit worried about this. Another much-needed Cushing build, but we still are quite low at 33.7M barrels, we really should be over 40M barrels. Total products supplied averaged 20.9 million barrels a day, up by 11.0% from the same period last year, but down slightly from last week at 21.3M barrels per day.

Overall, this is a strong report for E&P and services companies.

EIA PETROLEUM INVENTORIES VS INVENTORIES FROM THIS SAME WEEK IN PRIOR YEARS