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 was relatively neutral in our view. Crude stocks built by +1.9 million, though the majority was an SPR build of +1.4 million (so commercial stocks only +0.5 mil higher). Gasoline stocks rose +2.1 million, while distillate slipped slightly (-0.1 mil). The net was better than the API report last night but featured a slightly bigger build than in the pre-release analyst forecast. Compared to the year ago week, total crude oil stocks are +2.5% higher, commercial crude stocks are -4% lower, gasoline stocks are -3.5% lower, and distillate inventory is +8.3% higher.<br> <br>The details of the report leaned a little net bearish. Gasoline product supplied was perhaps the surprise, falling nearly -10% wk/wk, though that would only be -1% below year ago (which suggests to us the decline is seasonally-biased). Distillate product supplied (a proxy for demand) declined 8% wk/wk, and would be down roughly 8% versus the year ago comparable, too. Refiner utilization slipped -1.2% to 90.2%. Domestic oil production is starting to lap year ago comparisons and is roughly unchanged relative to this date in 2023. Cushing stocks slipped -0.1 mil bbl wk/wk; at 25.1 million total, this compares to 25.9 last year, and 24.7 million two years ago.<br> <br>The weekly EIA broadly continued recent ethanol trends. Ethanol production held roughly steady near record-high levels, slipping -0.3% to a 1.110 mil bbl/day rate, which would yield 326 million gallons of ethanol for the week, consuming 112 million bushels of total feedstock. Over a marketing year, such a rate of production would utilize just under 5.85 billion bushels of corn. Blender demand was a little weaker than we expected, falling -2%. Exports were unchanged at the prior week’s lofty levels (144k bbl/day vs. 78k last year). Ethanol imports remained zero. With the dip in blender interest, stocks were able to rebuild more, rising +2.4% to 22.56 million barrels (948 million gallons). Regionally, ethanol stocks were meaningfully higher at the Midwest and slightly higher on the East Coast, while the Gulf and West Coasts were unchanged.<br><br>KJ</span></div></div>