US crude oil stockpiles have risen to their highest in 16 months after unplanned refinery outages led to six straight weeks of inventory builds, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th January, 2023) US crude oil stockpiles have risen to their highest in 16 months after unplanned refinery outages led to six straight weeks of inventory builds, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.
In the most recent week to January 20, crude stockpiles rose by 533,000 barrels, bringing total builds to 30.3 million since the week ended December 24.
According to the EIA, which serves as the statistical arm of the US Energy Department, the total crude stockpile of 820.1 million barrels as of last week was the highest since September 2021.
A rash of unplanned refinery outages have led to the pile up of crude on the market.
Media reports said PBF Energy, a refinery producing diesel in Chalmette, Louisiana was shut after a fire on Saturday and could be out for at least a month.
Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, announced Monday that it will perform planned maintenance on several units at its Baytown, Texas, petrochemical complex.
Scheduled maintenance could be lengthier than expected this season, with many US Gulf Coast refineries still running below capacity after Winter Storm Elliott disrupted some 1.5 million barrels per day of refining capacity in December. A Suncor refinery in Commerce City, Colorado, has been offline since the storm.
Overhauls are also delayed by legacy problems caused by the now three-year-old coronavirus pandemic, with refiners reportedly planning twice as many overhauls this spring than usual.
These disruptions to normal refinery operations have restrained an expected rally in crude prices since the start of the year, with US crude trading at just around $80 a barrel versus forecasts for $85 and above.
The issues have, however, worked in favor of gasoline prices as the refinery outages raised the profit margin for a barrel of the leading automobile fuel to $36.88 as of Wednesday, versus last week's level of $34.91. The average price of gasoline at US pumps has climbed to $3.481 per gallon from $3.102 a month, the American Automobile Association said on Wednesday.
On the gasoline inventory front, the EIA reported a build of 1.763 million barrels for last week. Gasoline inventories have gone up by almost 10 million barrels to date since 2023 began. In the previous week, gasoline builds stood at 3.483 million. Automotive fuel gasoline is America's No. 1 fuel product.
With distillate stockpiles, there was a decline of 507,000 barrels for last week. Distillates, which are refined into heating oil, diesel for trucks, buses, trains and ships and fuel for jets, have been the strongest component of the US petroleum complex lately in terms of demand. Distillate stockpiles have fallen by more than 4 million barrels since the start of the year.
