API Numbers - Cumulative
FWIW, I used the API Weekly Inventory Data, as published by labpuppy, from 1/5/99 thru 6/8/99 (23 weeks), and got cumulative totals for Crude Oil, Gasoline, and Distillate/Heating Oil, to gauge the trend of supplies for the past 5 months. Not taking any possible "mitigating" factors into account (i.e., weather), I calculated the following results for this time span:
Crude Oil: -(4.0) million barrels, or a draw down of ~174K barrels/week.
Gasoline: +10.3 million barrels, or an increase ~448K barrels/week.
Distillate/Heating Oil: -(20.3) million barrels, or a draw down of ~883K barrels/week.
These numbers don't jive with the claims of the current IEA report that "...oil supplies have been eroded at about 900,000 barrels a DAY in the first quarter of this year and "we could see that rise to over 1.5 million barrels a day in the coming months..." I don't know what percentage of the total OPEC production comes to the U.S., but the above API WEEKLY numbers, even taking into account a possible reduced demand, simply doesn't make sense.
Any thoughts about the discrepancies?
Bernie |
