Crude and Petroleum Product Inventories - July 12 2023

Data per the EIA weekly report. 

Crude stocks Increased by +5.9M barrels, from last week, yet remains down -0.9% from the 5 year seasonal average. It should be noted the 5 year average includes the abnormal 2020 and 2021 number. Otherwise, the current inventory is nearly +2.5% above normal.

Distillates inventory jumped +4.8M barrels; and Gasoline inventories stayed flat. Distillates (-14%,-3.7%) and Gasoline (-5.6%, -2.8%) are both below 5 year and 3 year adjusted average inventories.

The SPR fell another -401K barrels.

WTI is $75.87, compared to $72.09, one week ago, and $90.15, one year ago.

Refinery output imporved on a weekly basis, yet remains below year ago levels

For anyone interested, the U.S. has exported 745M barrels of crude and petroleum products, more than imported, since March 1, 2022. It jumped nearly 10M barrels this past week.

Overall, crude stocks remain quite healthy, compared to this time last year, with days supply at 28, compared to last year's 25.9 days.

So how could inventories increase and yet the price of WTI go up? It is petro dollars and the dollar slipped due to the anticipated great news on the CPI, which would mean the FED might pause rate hikes. 

As the old saying goes...

You can fool all of the people some of the time,

And fool some of the people all of the time.

But you can't fool all the people, all of the time.

The question becomes... who is fooling whom?