Houston (Platts)--27Feb2014/315 pm EST/2015 GMT

US fuel oil demand fell to a seven-month low of 218,000 b/d in December, while 2013 demand overall was the lowest on record, US Energy Information Administration data published Thursday showed.

The Thursday data are monthly numbers released with a two-month lag and separately from the EIA's weekly petroleum status report, which is normally published on Wednesdays. Thursday's data dump provides figures for December and also allows for a full-year look at 2013 compared with previous years.

Domestic fuel oil demand peaked in the late 1970s, and has since been on a precipitous decline as the product fell out of favor with electric utilities across the US, especially along the East Coast, due to tighter environmental regulations and less expensive natural gas, whose production has boomed.

Although the five-year average for US fuel oil demand is 445,000 b/d, December demand was less than half that, the data show. Much of that decline is due to lower Atlantic Coast demand. In fact, the West Coast has overtaken the Atlantic Coast as the main consumer of fuel oil in six of the seven most recent months of data.

US fuel oil imports also have plummeted, with December's 168,000 b/d the lowest since March 2002.

Exports have jumped at the same time and averaged more than double imports in 2013.

Domestic fuel oil production averaged 454,000 b/d in December, down almost 3% from November but 17% higher than December 2012.

Full-year production averaged 467,000 b/d, which, like 2013 demand, was the lowest since the EIA began tracking the data in 1936.

That can be attributed to refiners looking to churn out less of a fuel with declining domestic use and the changing look of crude input. Rising US crude production is mostly made up of light shale crudes, which in turn produce fewer heavy products like residual fuel and asphalt.

The US weighted average API gravity of crudes input into refineries has been 30.63 since 2008. That compares with a gravity of 30.37 API for 2003-2007.

--John-Laurent Tronche, john-laurent.tronche@platts.com
--Edited by Annie Siebert, ann.siebert@platts.com

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/houston/us-fuel-oil-demand-production-in-2013-lowest-21277702