The recent Energy Information Administration petroleum report analyzes the gasoline consumption in the US and offers an explanations for the decline in gasoline consumption in 2011 compared to 2010; the main reasons include: high gasoline prices driven by high crude oil prices, economic slowdown and fleet efficiency.
Here is a weekly review for the week ends on August 26th of the U.S. oil and petroleum market including: gasoline and crude oil prices; petroleum, oil and gasoline stockpiles:
Petroleum Stocks
U.S. Petroleum and oil stocks nearly didn’t change again as they have decreased last week by 380 thousand barrels, or by 0.02%; the U.S. Petroleum and oil stocks fell for the fifth straight week. For the week ending on August 26th crude oil stocks reached 1,794.1 million barrels.
U.S. Ending Stocks of crude oil slightly rose by 555 thousand barrels and reached 1,058.8 million barrels; U.S. Ending Stocks of Total Gasoline on the other hand, declined by 1.32% compared with last week’s stocks; it reached 208.641 million barrels. U.S. Ending Stocks excluding SPR of Crude Oil reached 357.05 million bbl – a weekly increase of 5.28 million bbl.
The chart below shows the petroleum and oil stockpiles levels compared to the WTI crude oil prices during 2010 and 2011. It shows there is an apparent weak lagged effect between the changes in oil stockpiles and WTI spot oil prices. During 2011, the lagged linear correlation between WTI oil price and current oil stockpiles was -0.175.
Petroleum production and imports (for the week of August 26th)
The four week average of US production (million of barrels a day) for the week of August 26th reached 5.57, which is higher by 0.3% compared with the previous week’s, and is 2.7% above the average production at the same week in 2010;
Crude oil imports bounced back and inclined last week by 1.3% to 9.2 (for 4 week average) compared to the week of 19/8/2011; they were 4.6% below the average during the same time last year.
The crude oil refinery inputs (4 week average) reached 15.538 (million b/d), a decrease of 0.1% compared with the previous week of 19/8/2011, and were 3.6% above the same time last year.
Below is a detailed recap of the information listed above (for the week of August 26th):
Crude oil price, Gasoline and Diesel prices for the week ending on August 26th
The average U.S. gasoline retail price rose by nearly five per gallon compared with the previous week’s average; it reached $3.63 /g, which is $0.95 /g higher than the same week in 2010.
The national average Diesel prices also declined for the first time in five weeks by a penny compared with the previous week; it reached $3.82/g. which is $0.88/g higher than last year’s average price at same time.
A detailed analysis of crude oil prices for the week of August 26 is herein.
Propane
Propane stocks keep on stocking up; last week, their stocks rose by 1,545 thousand barrels – a 2.97% increase – reaching 53.590 million barrels.
[ratings]
For further reading (in this site):
Previous posts on this subject: