In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team late Monday, Macquarie strategists revealed that they are forecasting that U.S. crude inventories will be up by 7.2 million barrels for the week ending February 7.
“This compares to our early look for the week which anticipated an 8.0 million barrel build, and an 8.7 million barrel build realized for the week ending January 31,” the strategists said in the report.
“On the product side of the ledger, in aggregate, our expectations are moderately tighter than our early view,” they added.
In the report, the strategists noted that, “for this week’s crude balance, from refineries” they “model crude runs down slightly (-0.1 million barrels per day)”.
“Among net imports, we model a modest decrease, with exports (-0.9 million barrels per day) and imports (-1.2 million barrels per day) sharply lower on a nominal basis,” they added.
The strategists stated in the report that timing of cargoes remains a source of potential volatility in this week’s crude balance.
“Likewise, fog across the Texas coast could also impact crude and product balances this week,” the strategists warned in the report.
“From implied domestic supply (prod. +adj.+transfers), we look for a slight nominal decline (-0.1 million barrels per day) this week. Rounding out the picture, we anticipate another small increase in SPR inventory (+0.2 million barrels) on the week,” they added.
“Among products, we look for builds in gasoline (+0.6 million barrels) and jet (+0.7 million barrels), with another draw in distillate (-2.1 million barrels). We model implied demand for these three products at ~13.9 million barrels per day for the week ending February 7,” the strategists continued.
In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team last Thursday, Macquarie strategists outlined that they “anticipate another large U.S. crude build” in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) next weekly petroleum status report.
That report is scheduled to be released on February 12 and will include data for the week ending February 7.
“Looking ahead to next week’s release, we anticipate another large U.S. crude build (+8.0 million barrels), with runs up modestly (+0.2 million barrels per day), nominal implied supply down modestly (-0.2 million barrels per day), net imports higher (+0.4 million barrels per day), and a larger increase in SPR inventory (+0.9 million barrels) on the week,” Macquarie strategists noted in the report sent to Rigzone last Thursday.
“We note potential for volatility in these figures given the incomplete nature of this week’s data, with fog along the Texas coast representing an additional layer of uncertainty across the balances,” they added in that report.
“Among products, our preliminary expectations point to builds in gasoline (+0.7 million barrels) and jet (+1.1 million barrels), with distillate stocks up minimally,” they continued.
In its latest weekly petroleum status report at the time of writing, which was released on February 5 and included data for the week ending January 31, the EIA highlighted that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, increased by 8.7 million barrels from the week ending January 24 to the week ending January 31.
The report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 423.8 million barrels on January 31, 415.1 million barrels on January 24, and 427.4 million barrels on February 2, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 395.1 million barrels on January 31, 394.8 million barrels on January 24, and 358.0 million barrels on February 2, 2024, the report highlighted.
Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.605 billion barrels on January 31, the report showed. This figure was down 2.5 million barrels week on week and up 20.6 million barrels year on year, the report outlined.
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