Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending April 9, 2021......................................................................
U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.1 million barrels per day during the week ending April 9, 2021 which was 7,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 85.0% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.6 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 4.6 million barrels per day.
U.S. crude oil imports averaged 5.9 million barrels per day last week, down by 411,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.0 million barrels per day, 0.7% more than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 839,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 261,000 barrels per day.
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 5.9 million barrels from the previous week. At 492.4 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 1% above the five year average for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels last week and are about 2% below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased while blending components inventories decreased last week. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 2.1 million barrels last week and are about 4% above the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.0 million barrels last week and are about 16% below the five year average for this time of year. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 9.1 million barrels last week.
Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 19.6 million barrels a day, up by 20.0% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.8 million barrels a day, up by 37.4% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.9 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 8.6% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 24.8% compared with the same four-week period last year.
Black Blade (a.k.a. Dennis Erectus)
This wek's EIA Petroleum Inventory Status Report is MODERATELY BULLISH as Crude inventories decreased nearly 6 million bbls while Total Commercial Petroleum Inventories increased JUST OVER 9 million bbls as refinery utilization increased to around 85% as refiners overcame the struggles recovering from th "Great Texas Freeze" a few weeks ago. Refiners are also in the midst of making preparations to refine summer blends of transportation fuels so refinery utilization rate will reflect the seasonal maintenance issues. Tankers that were backed up during the Suez Canal blockage are showing up and that may increase inventories temporarily in the coming weeks but it does appear that deand recovery coud be at hand as transporation fuels see more demand as well as manufacturing demand. But there is limited upside as millions remain unemployed and more are "telecommuting" from home rather than travel into offices. Meanwhile OPEC+ is expected to increase oil production by 350,000 bbls/day. We also now have the International Energy Agency (IEA) calling for a whopping increase of 5.7 mb/d production. If there's that much demand for that much additional crude then the IEA has a very bullish outlook for the economy and the IEA is most often very pessimistic about energy demand. Make of it what you will. The US economy is running on fumes and looks forward to the next "Monetary Transfusion" or "Stimulus Package" or as some of us say "Gimme my Biden Bucks!". .
As for the "Blade Portfolio" we added VSTO this last week and we are still holding positions in our personal defense and security stocks MACE, POWW and MAGS. Not as many gun buyers ... that is until Joe Biden began talking "Gun Control" agai which spurred on another surge in gun sales. Still, the limiting factor is the lak of affordable ammo. That may soon change. Remington Ammo (now owned by our latest stock addition to the Blade Portfolio is Vista Outdoors). Vista Outdoors announced that they were expanding and ramping up ammo production 24/7 at the Arkansas facility and hiring and training hundreds of new workers. Since remington was about a third of US ammo production pre-pandemic the ammo supply crunch may begin to ease soon. As a side note, a Russian-immigrant friend this week imported a huge supply of Russian steel-case ammo (branded with his own company name) and is selling online. More steel-cased in .223/5.56 and 5.45x39 are supposedly coming in soon as well. However prices will stay somewhat higher than pre-oandemic because of inflation that has hit all commodities as the US Dollar continues to weaken. That said, those of us who stockpiled over the years watched the who madness of the crowds of unprepared scramble for limited supplies with some amusement. We of course lived by the motto "buy it cheap and stack it deep". The same old story - "Grasshopper and Ant" - Aesop.
Silver and Gold prices are still getting bounced around - up one day and down the next. We just keep adding physical silver and mining shares via our "dollar-cost-averaging" strategy. We have only adding more mining shares of GFI and KL this last week though. The US just can't seem to stop printing money "out of thin air". This obviously will at some point skyrocket precious metals prices (as well as all hard assets). One bargain in the whole investing complex right now is the depressed prices of Silver and Gold bullion so we are taking advantage of this opportunity. Buy assets while they are either ignored or hated. In the case of precious metals it is an ultimate hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.
Our Cryptocurrencies continue to make wild swings in price but we now sit at BTC near $65,000 which we use as our Cryptocurrency benchmark. We continue to hold BTC, ETH, ETC, LTC, MKR, TEZOS, XRP ALGO, COMP, CGLD, GRT and BAND. On a side note today Bitcoin exchange Coinbase goes public (ticker COIN) with the IPO price set at $250 a share ... it's currently up $112.45 at $363.45 a share. There's a lot of enthusiasm for Cryptos, however, Banksters are calling on the SEC, Fed and Governments to reign in Cryptos. Seems the Central Banksters don't like competition and they see Crytos as intruders in their monopoly.
We continue to add shares of RIG, KOS, MVO, ET and EPD while holding steady on our shares of DMLP, SPH, T, VZ, HEP, IRM, PPL, CAPL and GRME. We continue to add to our eREIT FUNDRISE. Our own rentals are occupied with stable renters and continue to provide decent cash flow. We now have three of our stripper wells up and operating and one more remaining idled. Not much elase to report on renewed drilling prospects yet.
As for Food and Necessities Storage - We reinventoried supplies and added several hundred pounds of hard wheat, rice and sugar this last week. Our projections have a near 5-7 year storage for our needs as we also continue to add additional crates of pasta, cases of sauces. etc. We continue to add a few cases of Freeze-Dried foods on accasion as we build up supplies for "very long storage" needs. We also added a few more gallons of cooking oil (stored in very cool dark conditions). We have begun preps to recycle out water supplies and through the process should have recycled nearly 10,000 gallons of fresh water while using the water currently stored for gardening use. We are optimistic that the recent cold didn't do too much hard to the early blooming fruit trees (i.e. apricots), while the late bloomers are starting to come on strong now (i.e. Nectarines, peaches, cherries, etc.). We did acquite several dozen more canning jars and lids so we are being optimists.
As always, get out of debt and stay out of debt, accumulate physical Silver and Gold bullion as "portfolio insurance", and stockpile supplies of long term nonperishable foods and basic necessities into storage. After all we do "live in interesting times".
"The Meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights" |
