Conclusion: The weekly DOE statistics are heavily impacted by the aftermath of hurricane Harvey in this weeks stats and will remain impacted for a few weeks. This weeks inventory build in crude was less than the market had expected, but it’s mostly due to weak imports. We expect more crude at sea to come ashore over the coming weeks, which means crude inventory data will continue to look bearish even as refiners coming back.
- Total petroleum build of 0.2mb, slightly below seasonal average. However, as expected, crude built heavily (5.9mb vs - 2.4mb seasonal) while mogas and distillates drew heavily (-8.4mb and -3.2mb respectively)
- Implied demand stayed high at 19.8mb/d but that number has to be taken with even a larger grain of salt thatn usual given the disruptions caused by the storm
- Exports snapped back heavily by over 1.5mb/d but still well below pre-storm levels. At the same time, imports came in even lower than last week (down 0.5mb/d wow). This lead to a sharp drop in net imports by over 2mb/d (however, last week saw a large increase in net imports as exports declined twice as much as imports). We expect imports to rebound heavily over the coming weeks as oil in tankers waiting at sea will offload their cargo.
- Refinery runs dropped further by 2% to 77.7%. This number will be sharply higher in next weeks stats.
- Crude output came back sharply by close to 600kb/d, reversing most of last weeks decline of 750kb/d.
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