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 arrived near the separate API inventory report from Tuesday, finding a modestly large crude build and small net product draws. Crude Oil jumped +6.4 million barrels (SPR up +0.3), gasoline stocks slipped -1.6 million barrels, and distillate inventory upticked +0.3 million. Compared to the year ago week, total crude oil stocks are +2.6% higher, commercial crude stocks are -2.6% lower, gasoline stocks are +4.3% higher, and distillate inventory is -1.2% lower.<br> <br>The report details again held mixed feature. Gasoline product supplied remained somewhat depressed, slipping another -2% wk/wk to levels that are -8% worse than the prior year. Distillate product supplied (a proxy for demand) was +1% better wk/wk and improved upon the prior year by +5%. Refiner utilization slowed a notch, down -1% to 86% in use. U.S. crude oil production was little changed wk/wk at levels that are +3% greater than prior year. Cushing stocks featured an unusually large build, rising +2.4 million barrels wk/wk to 25.1 million, though that is still well below last year’s 33.2 and two years ago at 34.2 million.<br> <br>The ethanol data in the weekly EIA was also mixed yet again, and in somewhat confusing fashion. Weekly ethanol production unexpectedly upticked +1% wk/wk; the resulting 1.063 mil bbl/day rate would yield 313 million gallons of ethanol over the week, consuming 108 million bushels of total feedstock. Sustained over a marketing year, such a rate would utilize 5.6 billion bushels of corn. Blender demand was better than expected, particularly considering the poor gasoline offtake, jumping more than +2% wk/wk. Reported ethanol exports were poor, falling to 62k bbl/day versus 164k last week. Despite the rather hefty export miss, ethanol stocks still managed to draw significantly, falling -2.7% to 26.6 million barrels (1.12 billion gallons). Regionally, stocks were sharply lower on the East Coast and Midwest but built on the Gulf Coast (due to softer shipments??).</span></div><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">KJ</span></div>