EIA Distillate Fuel Production Change

EIA Distillate Fuel Production Change is the week over week change in Distillate Fuel Oil Production, the official EIA weekly series. Distillate fuel oil covers diesel and heating oil combined, measured as US refinery output in thousand barrels per day. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects the data through the Petroleum Supply Reporting System (PSRS) for the weekly report running since 1979. It is not diesel alone, demand, or stocks, it is not seasonally adjusted, and it has no target level.

The report week runs Friday 7:01 am to the next Friday 7:00 am, and refineries file by Monday 5:00 pm for Tuesday review. Tables and highlights appear Wednesday at 10:30 am Eastern, with full tables at 1:00 pm, and holiday weeks shift by one day. Each release states direction and level with 4-week averages and year-ago comparisons, plus inputs, imports, exports, stocks, product supplied, and prices. Errors over 5% require resubmission, revisions appear only when they change supply views, and weekly data are checked against final monthly and annual data.

US output sums refinery reports across regions, so outages, input rates, and regional shifts drive the change.

• Refinery reports: the measured base from weekly surveys, covering about 90% of volume with monthly review before scale-up.
• PAD District totals: regional sums that build the US total, with no sub-product split for production.
• Crude inputs and utilization: feed and use rates published beside output that move with production.
• Monthly benchmark: complete monthly reports used to expand the weekly sample to full coverage.

In the week ending December 30, 2022, Winter Storm Elliott shut refinery capacity across the Gulf Coast. Refinery inputs averaged 13.8 million barrels per day, down 2.3 million from the prior week, and use stood at 79.6%. Distillate output averaged 4.0 million barrels per day, and 4-week output was 4,847 thousand barrels per day versus 5,172 (prior week) and 4,891 (year earlier). Stocks fell 1.4 million barrels to 118.8 million, 14% below the 5-year average, then use reached 84.1% with output at 4.5 million barrels per day.

1. Collection on Form EIA-800: Refineries and fractionators file distillate output for the Friday to Friday week, covering about 90% of volume. The sample is reviewed monthly, and production coverage reached 99% in 2011 and 98% in 2012.
2. Imputation, a fill-in using past values: For missing or failed reports, EIA fills the gap with exponential smoothing, a weighted blend of past values. It uses Y(t) = alpha x y(t) + (1 - alpha) x Y(t-1), with alpha between 0 and 1 and high for production.
3. Expansion to full coverage: Weekly Ws is scaled as Wt = (Mt / Ms) x Ws. As a made-up example, weekly Ws of 4,400 with monthly all-firm Mt of 139,128 and sample Ms of 136,400 gives 1.02 and Wt of 4,488.
4. Aggregation and review: Totals are summed across plant types and regions, checked against the prior 3 weeks, the year-ago week, and 4-week means. There is no extra weighting and no seasonal adjustment.
5. Weekly change: The page change equals output this week minus output last week in thousand barrels per day. In the same made-up case, US output of 4,900 minus 5,100 gives -200 thousand barrels per day, or -0.2 million.