The Oil Drum

This is more for the historic record than much else, although it is true that every picture tells a story, and with the impact evident in the gas prices, here is the current state of the gasoline stocks in the US, according to the EIA Wednesday. The timing of the curve should capture the measure of this season’s drop in volume.

Robert has already discussed this on his own site but since there was some discussion of these figures, I thought it useful to post them so that the more general audience could see them. So all I want to do is insert the relevant states of the various plots that we usually put up at frequent intervals. (Though I will also pause to point that the curve is now turning up, as Robert predicted it would on Tuesday). Perhaps the most relevant (in regard to us not worrying) is the state of the crude stocks, since with those available, then we can produce more gasoline as it now becomes more in demand. It may not, however, turn around fast enough to avoid an all-time high in gas prices.

After Khebab had posted his excellent information on the Production Forecasts on Monday, I sent a copy of the initial summary plot to the person I consider my ultimate boss in this neck of the woods. The reply came down "Does this mean the end of the world?" And I was for a while perplexed as to exactly how to reply.

In large measure much of the information that we talk about on this site is not widely known. To most people none of those who have modeled the coming of peak oil are known, and they would not know Cambridge Energy Research Associates from the Central Electric Railfan's Association . Every so often we have looked to see how popular the terms "Peak Oil" , "Saudi Oil" and "OPEC" are on the internet, starting in April 2005. Using blogpulse as the tool I thought it germane to see if there had been any change in the popularity of the phrases. Prof G changed the plots to compare "Peak Oil" with "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" in July 2005 and found that interest in "Peak Oil" was going down. We went back for another look in February this year and the Peak Oil line was again just a thin line at the bottom. But by April there was another upswing in popularity. So how are we currently doing? (Answers below the fold).

Very often when a story drops off the headlines, there is not a lot of interest in what then happened. However, having been curious enough to post the gas supply information a few weeks ago when the graph of volume in storage suddenly fell off a cliff, I thought I would close out this chapter with the graphs that show that, for now, the situation is getting back to normal.

A couple of weeks ago I heard the EIA presentation in which they anticipated that, by the end of the year, demand would have increased around 1.3 mbd.  Looking at the figures for the end of October (the first month of the 4th Quarter where demand is historically greatest) one sees that this prediction may well become true, at least the US is moving back in that direction.

Although the four-week averages of the gasoline demand show that demand is still approaching last year's, the weekly number has now passed 9 mbd, above last year.

However, as the import numbers suggest, taking individual weekly data by itself can be a mistake, since over the past week imports have turned back up by 200,000 bd after dipping down, and so are still that half-a-million above normal.

. At present the volume in stocks seems to remain fairly steady at the average of the past few years volume.