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Welcome to this week’s Thirsty Thursday: An Inventory Report. With St. Patrick’s day around the corner, I thought we would drink a classic Irish cocktail, the Irish Coffee. With the cold weather we are having lately a warm drink like this one with the addition of some Irish whiskey will hopefully warm you up. So brew some coffee, pour in some whiskey, cozy up, and let’s dive into this week’s inventory data.
Crude Oil Stocks
It’s not like I expected there to suddenly be a few draws, but I hoped we would see at least a few. It looks like we are back to builds. This week it’s a 1.5 million barrel build. The EIA had forecasted a 1.188 million barrel build.
The API reported a similar-sized build of 1.155 million barrels, however, forecasted a much smaller build at just over 0.5 million barrels.
Fears of regressing economies have been fueling build after build not only here in the US, but in other major petroleum exporting countries as well. Lately, however, those fears have been lessened as China, one of the largest consumers of petroleum products, has been recovering.
Oil and Natural Gas Prices
Well, this wasn’t a good week for the price of oil. Brent and WTI both fell about $6 over the course of the week. With turmoil in the world of banking, the price of oil has fallen over inflation worries. Since the release of the inventory data, there have been increasing talks over OPEC+ production cuts, resulting in a slight bump in prices.
While natural gas has also suffered the effects of the banking sector, it fell by only about 1.5 cents.
Fuels Market
The overwhelming crude oil inventory hasn’t seemed to have a positive effect on gasoline prices. Perhaps if more of it could be refined the price of gas would respond positively. In the graph on the right, we see that the gasoline inventory is indeed suffering. There is still a disconnect between turning crude oil inventory into gasoline inventory.
Gas is just slightly more expensive at $0.003. California is still the most expensive gas in the country and Mississippi the least expensive.
Diesel dropped this week by just 5 cents. While distillate stock, primarily responsible for diesel price, has remained flat. Propane and propylene haven’t done anything exciting in about a year.
Crude Oil Imports/Exports
Here is a new section of the report, I thought some insight into the US’s oil imports and exports would be good to cover, so here is a first take at presenting that data to you. First the big picture. Below we are looking at US crude oil imports, exports, and net beginning in 2019 and up to last week.
Zooming in on just this week; while net crude imports/exports are positive, other petroleum products exports heavily outweigh imports this week, bringing the net imports/exports into negative territory.
US Weekly Import/Export Data (Feb 17 – 24)
| Product | Imports (Mbbl/d) | Exports (Mbbl/d) | Net (Mbbl/d) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crude Oil | 6,456 | 4,068 | 2,388 |
| Other Petroleum Products | 2,289 | 5,953 | -3,665 |
| Total Oil + Products | 8,745 | 10,021 | -1,277 |
Finally, where are those exports going and where are the imports coming from? Below are monthly total crude oil and products data for December, the latest month there is data for.
US Monthly Import/Export Origin and Destination Data (December 2022)
| Export Destination | Total (Mbbl) | Import Origin | Total (Mbbl) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico | 36,952 | Canada | 128,962 |
| Canada | 24,776 | Mexico | 23,618 |
| Netherlands | 22,233 | Saudi Arabia | 18,763 |
That does it for this week. I hope everyone has a great weekend and we’ll see you next week, cheers!
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