New York (Platts)--9Jan2008
US petroleum balances continued to tighten with crude stocks declining
6.8 million barrels to 282.841 million barrels, the lowest level since the
week of October 15, 2004 and the eighth consecutive drop in inventories, based
on data released Wednesday by the Energy Information Administration.
Over the past eight weeks, US crude stocks have fallen a cumulative
31.835 million barrels. At 282.841 million barrels, US crude stocks were 8.842
million barrels below the five-year average and 31.845 million barrels below
year-ago levels. But generally crude stocks stop their seasonal decline by the
second week in January and inventories build throughout the first quarter.
The largest decline occurred in PADD III (Gulf Coast) where stocks fell
7.2 million barrels to 141.1 million barrels. Stocks along the Gulf Coast have
dropped 56.849 million barrels since hitting an all-time high of 197.998
million barrels the week of July 13, 2007. Stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma--home
of the NYMEX delivery point--edged up a sparse 200,000 barrels to 17.7 million
barrels, essentially unchanged for the past five weeks and reflected by a
rather stagnant front spread on NYMEX.
A lethal combination of a drop in imports and a 1.9% jump in refinery
utilization to 91.3% led to the larger-than-expected drop in crude stocks.
Crude imports slipped 203,000 barrels to 9.806 million barrels, affected
by two days of port closures in Mexico. Gross inputs jumped 337,000 b/d to
15.921 million b/d with most of the gains occurring on the Gulf and Atlantic
Coast.
This is the highest throughputs have been since the week of August 31,
prior to the onset of Autumn maintenance season and a series of refinery
problems that left product output at woeful levels. And the jump in
throughputs translated into higher product output.
--Linda Rafield, linda_rafield@platts.com
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