Most idled refining capacity resulting from annual maintenance and repairs has been completed, with a few outstanding work projects continuing. Gasoline stocks slimmed a bit further. U.S. refining capacity utilization remains at 90.2%. There is no supply shortage looming, but the data are not what they need to be for summer, according to the most recent Lundberg Survey of U.S. fuel markets.
Although oil prices perked up a little at the end of the prior two-week period, in these two weeks, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) shed the equivalent of 4 cents per gallon (CPG). On Saturday, OPEC+ established that it will raise oil production for the third month in a row, with 411,000 more barrels per day in July. Machinations for adjusting baselines considering some OPEC members over-production notwithstanding, more oil is on the way. The oil market in the main expected it, but prices won’t be immune to actual barrels arriving to bless thirsty world consumers during the next two months, even if output in non-OPEC nations such as the United States slips some as it succumbs to low prices that hinder pumping.
According to decades of historical Lundberg demand databases, July is not always the the peak gasoline demand month. In fact, the peak gasoline demand month is often June and sometimes August. Each year, it is a three-month challenge during which suppliers and all of the infrastructure of the downstream, and the best efforts of all parties seeking to maximize sales by minimizing price, are always employed. They are always victorious.
Analyses of world oil demand in gleaning potential oil price changes can be lopsided: Domestic petroleum demand rises in summer outside the United States we well, for example in the Middle East, with fewer automotive vacationers but vital need for air conditioning. Myriad articles about U.S. summer demand for petroleum products mention only car and truck use, but of course air conditioning is a factor here as well.
Meanwhile, two geopolitical crises, Ukraine-Russia and Iran’s nuclear program, remain unresolved, and multiple possible outcomes of either crisis are built into oil prices. Projections of oil price crashes abound, but projectionists know that a price shock to the upside is also possible. The other gigantic source of warning headlines, that of possible pain for U.S. consumers and therefore petroleum demand, are the still-unfolding U.S. tariffs on our trading partners. The tariff issue is, however, arguably puny in comparison to the war between Russia and Ukraine and to Iran’s nuclear or non-nuclear future and what they can do to petroleum prices.
What is clear at the moment is adequate but not blooming gasoline margins for the U.S. downstream. Margins will be batted up and down by world oil price responses to struggles among other nations.
Click here for previous Lundberg Survey reports in CSP Daily News.
Trilby Lundberg is publisher of the Lundberg Survey of U.S. fuel markets. Lundberg Survey Inc. is based in Camarillo, California.
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