E Oil Inventories And Refinery Utilization Declines But Country Remains Oversupplied With Oil

For the past year or so, I have been periodically publishing new articles to this site tracking the development of the nation’s oil inventories as one of the most widely blamed reasons for the rapid decline in oil prices last year is that the nation was greatly oversupplied with oil. While the numbers do indicate an oversupply of oil, the full story is much more complicated than that, as I have discussed in numerous columns. I regret that I have not been able to post new articles in this series in a few weeks, but this is something that I am committed to correcting going forward.

At the end of the week ended September 18, 2015, the nation’s commercial inventories of crude oil contained a total of 454.0 million barrels of crude oil. This represents a decrease of 1.9 million barrels compared to the 455.9 million barrels that were in these same inventories at the end of the week ended September 11, 2015. However, despite this week-over-week decline, the nation’s oil inventories contain well above the typical levels for this time of year. These inventories also contain much more oil than they had at the end of the corresponding week of last year. At the end of the week ended September 19, 2014, the nation’s inventories contained a total of 358.0 million barrels of crude oil.

While oil inventories have generally been significantly above their average levels for the past several months, the same is not true of gasoline inventories. These have generally been relatively stable year-over-year. The same is true in the most recent week. At the end of the week ended September 18, 2015, the nation’s commercial inventories of motor gasoline contained a total of 218.8 million barrels. This is a slight increase over the 217.4 million barrels that these same inventories contained at the end of the week ended September 11, 2015. While this is higher than last year’s levels, the year-over-year increase is fairly minor. At the end of the week ended September 19, 2014, these same inventories contained a total of 210.3 million barrels of gasoline.