Refinery input was up by 250 Mb/d to 15.85 MMb/d last week, the highest so far this year, and gross refinery input was up by 300 Mb/d to 16.45 MMb/d, per the EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report. This increased capacity utilization by 1.7 percentage points to 91%, the highest this year. As a reminder, total refinery input represents the total crude oil, foreign and domestic, that feeds into crude oil distillation units and other refinery processing units, like cokers. Gross refinery input includes crude oil as well as unfinished oil and plant NGLs. The crude market fundamentals balance on the total refinery input, but the utilization rate and individual PADD changes that are often referenced come from the gross input figures. Finished motor gasoline demand fell by 400 Mb/d to 8.5 MMb/d, which helped boost gasoline inventories by 1.3 MMbbl. The average price of retail gasoline has gone up from $3.40/gal to $3.64/gal over the past four weeks as the summer driving season shifts into gear.
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Achy Breaky Refineries? – Record Pace of Crude Refining Leads to Higher Fall Maintenance
During the first 7 months of 2015 the U.S. experienced record setting refinery crude processing and utilization rates. By the end of July crude inputs topped 17 MMb/d for the first time and nationwide refineries ran at over 96% of operable capacity - reaping the rewards of robust margins. But the party has been marred by a number of unexpected outages – the latest of which brought down a 250 Mb/d unit at BP’s Whiting, IN refinery last weekend – causing a spike in Chicago gasoline prices. Today we ponder why outages may be occurring and the upcoming impact of overdue fall maintenance.
Refined, Piped, Delivered, They’re Yours—A Challenging Era for U.S. Refineries
The U.S. energy production renaissance isn’t just changing where we get our crude oil and natural gas from, it’s forcing major shifts in the domestic oil refining sector. Gulf Coast, East Coast and Midwest refineries that used to depend heavily on foreign oil are turning to domestic sources, refiners’ ability to process very light U.S. crude is being stretched, and traditional pipeline flow patterns—for crude and refined products alike--are being up-ended. Today, we continue our look at fast-changing petroleum products markets and the infrastructure that supports them.
Looks Like We Made It - Colonial Leak's Impact Minimized by Imports, Use of Line 2
The increase in waterborne flows to the East Coast in response to the recent Colonial Pipeline outage illustrated the flexibility of supply in the U.S. motor gasoline market. At the same time, the lack of a lasting impact from the loss of 8.3 million barrels of gasoline to a key U.S. demand region highlighted the degree of oversupply in the market. Today we look at how waterborne flows helped to mitigate the effects of the Colonial Pipeline outage, and how flexibility in the East Coast motor gasoline market enabled it to handle unexpected supply constraints with minimal disruption.
