Energy

Crude Oil Stockpile Slips, Refining Runs Continue to Fall

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories decreased by 800,000 barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 502 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remains near levels not seen at this time of year in at least the past 80 years.

Tuesday evening the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories rose by 2.4 million barrels in the week ending January 29. For the same period, analysts had estimated an increase of 3.6 million barrels in crude inventories.

Total gasoline inventories increased by 1.3 million barrels last week, according to the EIA, and remain well above the upper limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s measure of consumption) averaged 8.9 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 2.6% compared with the same period a year ago.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil traded lower by about 8% last week, closing at $31.00 a barrel on Friday. In early morning trading Wednesday, the price fell below $28.00, down about 9.5% for the week so far. In its monthly Oil Market Report published Tuesday, the International Energy Agency sees non-OPEC production falling by 600,000 barrels a day, primarily due to lower production from onshore U.S. wells. OPEC production continues to rise, with January production up 1.7 million barrels a day compared with January 2015.


Even though many U.S. producers cannot make a profit at current prices, nearly all need to continue pumping in order to raise cash to pay interest on loans they made when prices were higher. This cannot go on forever, of course, and the general consensus is that by late this year prices will return to around $40 a barrel.

Before the EIA report, WTI crude for March delivery traded up about 0.6% at around $28.10 a barrel. It settled at $27.94 on Tuesday and bounced to around $28.94 shortly after the report’s release. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $27.56 to $65.69.

WTI prices fell following the massive build reported by the API. When the EIA number came in lower, the price rose. This is volatility talking, not fundamentals. Consider refinery runs, as we do later in this report.

Distillate inventories increased by 1.3 million barrels last week and remain near the upper limit of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 15.8% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged about 4.4 million barrels a day last week, down by about 100,000 barrels a day from the prior week.

For the past week, crude imports averaged over 7.1 million barrels a day, down about 1.1 million barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 86.1% of capacity, with daily input of averaging over 15.5 million barrels, about 105,000 barrels a day below the previous week’s average.

Refining runs have fallen by nearly a million barrels a day over the past four weeks. The totals are likely to fall further as stockpiles rise and refineries cut runs further as they prepare for maintenance and production of summer-grade gasoline.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $1.717, down about 3.7% from $1.783 a week ago and from $1.969 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.185 on average in the United States. Also last year, this week’s price was higher than the prior week’s, indicating that refining runs had already slowed for the turnaround.

Here is a look at how share prices for two blue-chip stocks and two exchange traded funds reacted to this latest report.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) traded up about 1.4%, at $81.20 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $93.45. Over the past 12 months, Exxon stock traded down about 11% and is down about 16% since early November of 2014, as of Tuesday’s close.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded up about 0.2%, at $83.08 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $112.93. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped about 24% over the past 12 months and trade down about 30% since early November 2014.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded down about 1.2%, at $8.08 in a 52-week range of $7.90 to $21.50. The low was posted earlier Wednesday morning.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded up about 0.2% at $22.40, in a 52-week range of $20.46 to $39.80.

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