The Oil Drum

Especially if that crude is a bit sour...makes sense?

Yeh, one would think from just the headline data that we burned through 8 million barrels of crude to make the 4 million barrels of gasoline...

But the report said:

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged nearly 15.5 million barrels per day during the week ending November 30, down 20,000 barrels per day from the previous week's average. Refineries operated at 89.4 percent of their operable
capacity last week.

Then later said:

Crude Oil Input to Refineries 15,216 15,009 1.4 15,158 15,232 -0.5

The top part referenced last week, the last part is YOY.

It looks to me like we ramped up our imports of gasoline over this period by a tad over 4M, and lost 8M barrels of crude inventory. Its not clear to me where this is in the report.

What really confuses me is that given the antics of the market over the last couple of hiccups, this one gets ignored. What would have sent oil a couple of weeks ago well over $100, today gets ho-hummed and dropped another buck or two to $87 as I type this. Its like the neighbor's car alarm that keeps going off in the middle of the night - its just making noise. Go back to sleep.

The Saudis handled this one well. I think the market was afraid SA had hit their geological production limit. Just one rumor from them about a production hike - backed up by Petrologistics reports of increased tanker activity - and oil plummets.

What makes it even worse is our Government's take on increasing taxation of our energy infrastructure when they need the money for their increased costs of expanding the infrastructure for processing ever more heavy sour crudes and developing marginal reservoirs.

Its my belief that people think we are crying wolf, when there is no wolf - only profits. I believe many scientists here have seen the wolf, but everytime they point it out, others hide it because they don't want the ensuing panic of proof of a bona-fide indestructible wolf in the midst of their flocks.

But then, I am a scientist too, and have known enough scientists to know their motivations are different from, say, the managerials - who use different weightings in what they think is important.

Steve