Platts analysis of U.S. EIA oil stocks data: Refiners up gasoline yields and stocks build
New York, NY - March 18, 2009
A spike in gasoline yields to more than 61% caused U.S. inventories to climb an unexpected 3.2 million barrels to 215.712 million barrels last week, an analysis of the weekly oil data released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Analysts polled by Platts had projected a decline of 2.1 million barrels in gasoline stocks.
At 215.712 million barrels, gasoline stocks were just 574,000 barrels below the five-year average, but 16.8 million barrels below year-ago levels.
Gasoline imports fell 220,000 barrels per day (b/d) to 1.004 million b/d while gasoline demand week-over-week was essentially unchanged.
Gasoline demand on a four-week moving average, at 9.035 million b/d, was still up 1.1% year-over-year. This marked a slow down of 0.5 percentage points from the previous EIA report.
Total U.S. oil demand of 19.122 million b/d was 3.2% below year-ago levels, with every product category except gasoline below the previous year's readings.
Distillate demand continued to move lower, reflecting the general economic malaise. On a four-week moving average, distillate demand at 3.814 million b/d was 9.3% below year-ago levels. A sharp drop in distillate imports of 199,000 b/d to 103,000 b/d, which reflected lower imports of both diesel and heating oil, combined with another dip in demand on a week-over-week basis, resulted in a 100,000 barrel build in inventories. The build occurred solely in ultra low sulfur diesel.
Meanwhile, demand for crude oil barrels remained at exceptionally low levels, allowing inventories to climb another 1.942 million barrels to 353.281 million barrels. At 353.281 million barrels, U.S. commercial crude stocks were 37.764 million barrels above the five-year average and 41.522 million barrels above year-ago levels. The build in commercial crude stocks was accompanied by a 1.8-million-barrel deposit of crude into the U.S. government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.