In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Tuesday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists, including Walt Chancellor, revealed that they are forecasting that U.S. crude inventories will be down by 1.1 million barrels for the week ending August 29.
“This follows a 2.4 million barrel draw in the prior week, with the crude balance realizing slightly tighter than our expectations,” the strategists said in the report.
“As we have previously noted, we believe persistently strong implied supply has been a key feature of the U.S. crude oil balance across Q3 to date. As such, with U.S. oil production exiting Q2 at a record 13.6 million barrels per day in June, we see potential for this figure to move higher as subsequent monthly data is reported,” the strategists added.
“For this week’s balance, from refineries, we model a minimal reduction in crude runs. Among net imports, we model a slight decrease, with exports (+0.3 million barrels per day) and imports (+0.2 million barrels per day) higher on a nominal basis,” they went on to state.
The strategists warned in the report that timing of cargoes remains a source of potential volatility in this week’s crude balance.
“From implied domestic supply (prod.+adj.+transfers), we again look for an increase (+0.3 million barrels per day) on a nominal basis this week,” the strategists said in the report.
“Rounding out the picture, we anticipate a smaller increase (+0.5 million barrels) in SPR [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] stocks this week,” they added.
The Macquarie strategists also stated in the report that, “among products”, they “look for a healthy gasoline draw (-3.0 million barrels) largely offset by builds in distillate (+1.4 million barrels) and jet (+1.0 million barrels)”.
“We model implied demand for these three products at ~14.5 million barrels per day for the week ending August 29,” the strategists added in the report.
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, decreased by 2.4 million barrels from the week ending August 15 to the week ending August 22, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report, which was released on August 27 and included data for the week ending August 22.
The EIA report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 418.3 million barrels on August 22, 420.7 million barrels on August 15, and 425.2 million barrels on August 23, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 404.2 million barrels on August 22, 403.4 million barrels on August 15, and 377.9 million barrels on August 23, 2024, the report revealed.
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 1.662 billion barrels on August 22, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were down 3.6 million barrels week on week and up 6.8 million barrels year on year, the report showed.
In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team on August 25, Macquarie strategists, including Walt Chancellor, revealed that they were forecasting that U.S. crude inventories would be down by 1.9 million barrels for the week ending August 22.
The EIA’s next weekly petroleum status report is scheduled to be released on September 4. It will include data for the week ending August 29.
A data page on the EIA website showing monthly U.S. field production of crude oil, which was last updated on August 29 and which includes data from January 1920 to June 2025, showed that monthly U.S. field production of crude oil averaged 13.58 million barrels per day in June. This figure is the highest in the data set.
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