US oil inventories increased and demand fell last week – crude oil, total petroleum, gasoline, distillate fuels and propane inventories all increased and demand fell compared to the same 4-week period last year for all categories. But oil markets shrugged off the news and rose Wednesday and in early overnight trading Thursday. Though this is the same pattern we were seeing this time last year at the height of the oil bubble, in this case the news is a bit more positive than just a return of the oil bubble (which is not likely). For weeks nothing has put a floor under oil because the thing driving oil prices downward has been anxiety about the global economy; this oil rebound seems to be part of a broader floor that includes stock prices, other commodity prices and foreign currencies (against the dollar), at least for now.
US Petroleum Supplies and Refining At a Glance
Total Petroleum Inventories: Up 6.7 million barrels Crude Oil Inventories: Up 0.4 million barrels Gasoline Inventories: Up 3.8million barrels Distillate Fuels Inventories: Up 5.6 million barrels Propane/propylene inventories: Up 800,000 barrels Refinery Crude Inputs: 15.0 million barrels/day Change: Up 387,000 barrels/day Refinery Activity: 87.4%
US Petroleum Demand At a Glance Compared to Same 4-Week Period Last Year
Total Products Supplied: Down 6.1% Gasoline: Down 3.2% Distillate Fuel: Down 4.0% Jet Fuel: Down 16.8%
This Week in Petroleum has something interesting buried in its analysis of the increase in «fleet-wide fuel efficiencies» in 2008 compared to the previous oil price shock of 1979-82.
Because fleet-wide efficiencies in the current period are almost twice that of those prior going into the 1979-82 period, the impact on gasoline use of switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles is more limited. In addition, the increasing use of ethanol in the motor gasoline pool has lowered the average per-gallon energy content of the fuel, which increases the volume of fuel required per mile of travel at any given level of vehicle efficiency.
Economists would put this more succinctly: conservation has reached the point of dimishing marginal returns.
OIl report and This Week in Petroleum - December 10 2008 [PDF] Full current report with data tables [PDF]
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December 10 2008, 9:50pm | Original Link »
