Refinery Operations Remain Stalled
March 4, 2021
Well the inventory report had some big numbers after the huge upset brought on by the extremely cold temperatures that shut down refineries. Crude stocks were up 21.56 million barrels putting total stocks at 484.61 million barrels and last year at this time there were 444.119 million barrels some 40 million more barrels but despite the huge build the largest of all times the market is still paying attention.
Gasoline stock were down 13.62 million barrels putting total stocks at 243.472 million barrels which compares to last year when there were 252.048 million barrels a difference of a negative 8.576 million barrels. Gasoline stocks in PADD II, our main market, the Midwest are at 51.34 million barrels compared to last year when there were 60.10 million barrels putting stock 8.76 million below that level.
Distillate stocks were down 9.72 million barrels putting total stocks at 142.996 million barrels which compares to last year when stocks were 134.464 million barrels. So, we are still 8.532 million barrels ahead of last year, but the market is concern at how fast supplies have been reduced.
Refinery utilization was down 12.60% with refineries running at 56.00% of capacity and huge drop off. Not running refineries makes crude inventory back up and you get a huge build and no products are being produced so you get huge declines. Refineries will do what they can to get back up and running and produce product at a high level as refinery margins are good.
Today is the end of the OPEC meeting and the market is hoping to get some news and the current outlook is that they will increase production somewhere from 900,000 to 1.5 million bpd. The news of OPEC+ will likely be the market news and the market mover today.