Tight Inventory Levels Will Lift Gasoline Prices

Commodities & Metals

Published: February 26, 2014 10:50 am

Last Updated: April 28, 2020 7:41 am

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 100,000 barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory to 362.4 million barrels and remaining in the upper half of the five-year range for this time of the year.

Total gasoline inventories also decreased by 2.8 million barrels last week. They are in the upper half of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the EIA’s measure of consumption) averaged more than 8.3 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down about 1.5% from the same period a year ago.

Distillate inventories rose by 300,000 barrels last week, but remain well below the lower limit of the average range. Distillate product supplied averaged more than 3.7 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 0.1% when compared with the same period of last year. Distillate production totaled 4.6 million barrels a day last week, up about 100,000 barrels from the prior week.

Tuesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute reported that crude inventories rose by 822,000 barrels in the week ending February 21, together with a drop of 314,000 barrels in gasoline supplies and a decrease of 693,000 barrels in distillate supplies. For the same period, Platts estimated a rise of 1.5 million barrels in crude inventories, a decline of 1.5 million barrels in gasoline inventories and a decrease of 2 million barrels in distillate inventories.

Crude prices closed at $101.83 on Tuesday and were trading up about 0.5% before the EIA report at around $102.36 a barrel. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price rose slightly to around $102.48 shortly after the report was released.

For the past week, crude imports averaged 7 million barrels a day, down about 400,000 barrels a day from the previous week. Refineries were running at 88% of capacity, with daily input of 15.3 million barrels a day, about 100,000 barrels more than the previous week’s total.

According to AAA, the current average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $3.432, up from $3.375 a week ago and $3.282 a month ago. Last year a gallon of regular cost $3.782 on average in the United States.

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