EIA Oil Stocks Preview: Crude Draw, Higher Refinery Utilisation Expected

EIA Oil Inventory Preview: The EIA weekly petroleum status report will be released at 10:30 ET (15:30 BST) today.

• Crude inventories are expected to draw by -1.27mbbls for the week ending 23 June according to a Bloomberg survey. Crude last week showed a draw driven by a surge in exports and drop in production while the oil adjustment factor remained high with little change on the week. The WTI-Brent spread edged slightly closer on the week to between -4.5$/bbl and -4.7$/bbl. Cushing stocks are expected to resume the trend higher since mid-April after the dip last week with AlphaBBL expecting a build of +1.4mbbls this week.
• Refinery utilisation is expected to tick back up by +0.23% to 93.3%. Utilisation was just slightly lower last week but rates in the Midwest rose to the highest since Aug 2022 at 95.3%. Utilisation on the East Coast fell as expected due to the ongoing outage to the Phillips 66 Bayway FCC until 6 July.
• Gasoline stocks are expected to show a very small build of +0.06mbbls and distillates a build of +0.24mbbls according to a Bloomberg survey. Gasoline stocks showed a small build last week despite the drop in production while distillates built due to a dip in exports. US imports of European gasoline have reduced from the higher transatlantic flows seen in early June. Refining margins have remained relatively stable in the last week with support from low inventory levels offsetting economic demand concerns.
• Four-week gasoline and distillates implied demand dipped slightly on the week despite increases in the weekly data. The market is watching for an increase in summer product demand with total oil product supplied last week up to the highest since December and jet fuel the highest since last summer. Gasoline demand has seen a gradual increase in line with the seasonal trend since April. Last week Sun-Tue US gasoline demand was up 3.3% from the same period last week according to GasBuddy data and last Sunday US gasoline demand jumped 8.1% from a week ago to reach the strongest Sunday gasoline demand since Spring Break in March.
• The API data released last night showed a crude stock draw of -2.41mbbls with build of +1.45mbbls at Cushing. Gasoline inventories showed a draw of -2.85mbbls and distillates a build of +0.78mbbls.