The Platts pre-report analyst survey of EIA/API estimates suggests a 1.47-million-barrel build in US crude oil stocks
Platts Survey of Analysts
- Crude oil stocks up 1.7 million barrels
- Gasoline stocks up 850,000 million barrels
- Distillates stocks up 1.28 million barrels
- Refinery utilization, or run rate, down 0.09 percentage point to 89.51%
New York - May 10, 2010
This week's American Petroleum Institute (API) and U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) petroleum data should show a commercial crude oil stock build of 1.7 million barrels for the week ending May 7, analysts polled by Platts said Monday, continuing on a trend in place since mid-January.
API is scheduled to release its data at 4:30 p.m. ET (2130 GMT) Tuesday. EIA's report will be released at 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT) Wednesday.
U.S. crude stocks climbed 13 out of the 14 weeks between January 22 and April 30, according to the EIA's data, to 360.575 million barrels from 326.677 million barrels.
While refinery operations have been rising over the same period, so have crude imports. Analysts expect crude imports to remain high enough to keep the stock-building trend intact.
"This week's [EIA] report is likely to continue along the same vein that has been seen recently," said Cameron Hanover analysts in a report. "Increases in refinery utilization have given us higher refinery production levels, and crude oil imports were higher last week, which suggests to us that utilization is unlikely to decline dramatically anytime soon."
Analysts expect refinery operations to slip 0.09 percentage point to 89.51% of capacity, based on last week's EIA data.
"The Gulf coast region should account for the bulk of the decrease following the recent upsurge in [Gulf] run rates to highest levels since August of 2007," analyst Jim Ritterbusch of Ritterbusch and Associates said in a report.
Gulf Coast crude inputs at 7.758 million barrels per day (b/d) the week ending April 30 were the highest since 7.78 million b/d the week ending August 3, 2007, according to the EIA.
With run rates, or refinery utilitzation, remaining high, analysts are looking for refined product stocks to build. U.S. gasoline stocks are expected build by 850,000 barrels, and distillate stocks by 1.28 million barrels.
"Distillate supplies have built in 5 of the past 5 years during this particular week with the average hike approximating 1.1 [million barrels]," Ritterbusch said.
Another stock build will likely keep the heavy distillate surplus in place. U.S. distillate stocks at 152.393 million barrels the week ending April 30 were 35.152 million barrels (29.98%) above the five-year average, according to the EIA.
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