MOSCOW (MRC) -- US crude oil stockpiles rose by 19 million barrels last week, the biggest one-week increase in history, the US Energy Information Administration said, as refiners throttled back activity due to slumping demand as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, reported Reuters.
The build in the week to April 10 was much larger than the Reuters poll calling for a 11.7 million-barrel rise and offsets some of the optimism that had bloomed as a result of a worldwide pact between oil producers to cut output sharply. Crude futures slumped on the news.
"Even though we knew it was going to be bad, it’s worse than people thought," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. "You look at gasoline demand and it’s pathetic. If you were going to write a nightmare report about petroleum, this is it."
Worldwide fuel demand has dropped by roughly 30% as businesses have shuttered, and residents avoid public gatherings and travel due to the pandemic, which has killed more than 130,000 people and infected 2 million. Most US states have issued orders asking people to stay at home; gasoline demand over the last four weeks has dropped by 32% from the year-ago period, EIA said.
Refiners have responded by cutting crude purchases and processing; they were operating at 69% of capacity nationwide, their lowest since September 2008, and their actions to counter weak demand is rippling through pipeline companies and oil producers. The latter are being forced to cut production, as some pipeline companies have said they cannot ship oil unless it has a proven destination.
Storage, meanwhile, continues to fill. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for U.S. crude futures rose by 5.7 million barrels last week, the EIA said, and now total 55 million barrels. The hub has about 76 million barrels of capacity, and could be full by mid-May, pipeline companies have said.
Crude prices dropped on the news, with US crude down 2.3% to USD19.69 a barrel as of 10:48 a.m. ET (1448 GMT) and Brent down 6.8% to USD27.60 a barrel.
Refinery crude runs fell by 969,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the last week, EIA said. Refinery utilization rates fell by 6.5 percentage points on the week.
US gasoline stocks rose by 4.9 million barrels in the week to record high at 262.2 million barrels, the EIA said, compared with expectations for a 6.4 million-barrel rise.
Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 6.3 million barrels in the week to 129 million barrels, versus expectations for a 1.4 million-barrel rise, the EIA data showed.
Net US crude imports fell last week by 797,000 bpd last week, EIA said.
As MRC informed preivously, Exxon Mobil Corp operates it 502,500 barrel-per-day Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery at low capacity utilisation as poor demand has pushed up inventories and filled storage tanks. The number of contract workers at the Baton Rouge refinery was cut by 1,800 people as Exxon begun informing service companies of planned spending cuts. The refinery’s production was cut to about 440,000 bpd, the sources said.
We remind that in September 2019, ExxonMobil announced plans to spend GBP140 million over the next two years in an additional investment program at its Fife ethylene plant, which has a capacity of more than 800,000 t/y.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC