US Weekly Oil Summary: Cushing Inventories Near Operational Low

Crude inventories at Cushing fell for the seventh week with a draw of 943k this week taking stocks to the lowest since July 2022 at 21.96mbbls amid strong refining and export demand. Stores fell to a low of 21.26m in July 2022.

• U.S. crude stockpiles the Cushing storage hub are getting close to the operational low of 20m bbl, below which oil is difficult to remove, according to Reuters.
• EIA Weekly US Petroleum Summary - w/w change week ending Sep 22: Crude stocks -2,169 vs Exp -600, Crude production 0, SPR stocks -250, Cushing stocks -943, Gasoline stocks +1,027 vs Exp -140, , Distillate stocks +398 vs Exp -640, Implied dist demand -194
• U.S. Rig Count fell by 7 on the week to 623, according to Baker Hughes Sep. 29.
• US oil production is being held back by inconsistent energy policy, Chevron Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth said as reported by Bloomberg.
• Oil-exporting terminals in Corpus Christi, Texas will be able to load more oil onto VLCCs starting from October.
• US shale executives are expecting record costs to increase according to the latest energy report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
• The USD drift extended further in early Friday trade before the trade began to reverse across US hours, with the greenback undeterred by a slightly lower than expected core PCE print and a softer MNI Chicago PMI headline including sharply lower prices paid and new orders subindices. It’s part of a broader intraday risk-off move, with equities also sliding since the US cash open.
• WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve officials are using the forward guidance embedded in their interest rate and economic forecasts as a way to effectively raise borrowing costs, making an already imprecise process more prone to possible overshooting, former Fed board economist Claudia Sahm told MNI.
• In a sign that ratings agencies are weary of Congressional dysfunction, Moody's, the last of the ‘big three’ to rate the US economy the equivalent of ‘AAA,’ said in a statement yesterday that a government shutdown would be "credit negative."
• Tighter monetary policy has finally made it to the top of U.S. corporate finance chiefs' list of worries, a sign that firms are at last feeling the effects of higher interest rates even if they still expect hiring and revenue growth to rebound next year, the CFO Survey director and Duke University economist John Graham told MNI.