Weekly EIA Petroleum & Ethanol Inventory Comment
<div class=\"default-font-wrapper\" style=\"line-height: 1;font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\"><div style=\"line-height: 1;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">Weekly EIA Petroleum & Ethanol Inventory Comment<br id=\"isPasted\"> <br>The EIA headline petroleum data leaned bearish, finding more builds than draws. Crude Oil stocks jumped +6.2 million barrels (including an +0.8 mil SPR build), gasoline stocks upticked +0.9 million, while distillate declined -1.1 million barrels. The market was looking for decisively lower product stocks and higher crude stocks. Compared to the year ago week, total crude oil stocks are +5% higher, commercial crude stocks are +1% higher, gasoline stocks are -4.4% lower, and distillate inventory is +1.6% higher.<br> <br>The details of the report were a little friendlier than the headline data would imply. Gasoline product supplied (a proxy for demand) rebounded nearly +3% post-hurricane, which would be near the year ago comparison. Distillate product supplied slipped -2% on the week but improved on the year ago week slightly (+1%). Refiner utilization rose another +1.8% on the week to 89.5% in use, which perhaps suggests confidence demand might quicken. Crude Oil production was unchanged wk/wk at levels that are around +2% higher than last year. Cushing stocks slipped -0.3 million barrels lower to 24.7 million, which compares to 21.2 last year and 26.9 mil two years ago.<br> <br>The ethanol data within the weekly EIA was mixed, finding higher production but lower stocks than expected. Ethanol production jumped nearly +4% higher on the week; the resulting 1.081 mil bbl/day rate would yield 318 million gallons of ethanol for the week, consuming 110 million bushels of total feedstock. Over a marketing year, such a rate of production would utilize 5.70 billion bushels of corn. Blender demand up-ticked fractionally as expected, but exports slowed a notch, falling to 106k bbl/day versus 140k last week and 65k last year. Ethanol imports remained zero. Despite the sharp rise in production, ethanol stocks declined -0.2% to 22.22 million barrels (933 million gallons). Regionally, ethanol stocks were higher on the East Coast, unchanged on the West Coast, but slightly lower at the Midwest and Gulf Coast.</span></div><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">KJ</span></div>