EIA Gasoline Production Change

EIA Gasoline Production Change is the week-on-week change in U.S. finished motor gasoline, the fuel ready for spark-ignition engines. It comes from the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, the Energy Information Administration weekly fuel survey system running since April 1979. It covers refinery output, blender output and a U.S.-only balancing adjustment for unreported blending, for the U.S. total and 5 districts.

It uses thousand barrels per day, a daily average unit, with no seasonal adjustment, and excludes crude output, demand, retail sales or prices. It rests on a cut-off sample covering about 90% of volumes from 7 surveys, reviewed monthly, so weekly moves can reflect estimation.

Each survey week runs from 7:01 a.m. Friday to 7:00 a.m. the next Friday, with clean data ready by Tuesday close. Reports are due by 5:00 p.m. Monday for Wednesday 10:30 a.m. Eastern release covering the prior Friday-ending week. Holiday weeks shift by one day, often to Thursday midday, with tables, highlights and price data released together in machine-readable files. Revised weekly data appear only for substantive changes, while late reports and errors above 5% feed the next week.

Four parts and regional splits shape the weekly change.

• Refinery net production: gasoline made at refineries, the largest measured share of Table 2 output.
• Blender net production: finished gasoline made at terminals by blending components, natural gas liquids and oxygenates.
• Fuel ethanol plant production: ethanol blended into gasoline, whose imbalance signals unreported output.
• Finished motor gasoline adjustment: U.S.-only computed gap between component supply and use, read as unreported blender output.
• Regional and grade splits: output split across 5 districts and reformulated versus conventional gasoline.

The week ending 3 April 2020 shows how demand can outweigh supply cuts. Gasoline output stood at 5,818 against 7,456 thousand barrels per day, down 1,638 and 42.8% on the year. Distillate fuel held at 4,982 against 4,966, up only 17, while utilization fell to 75.6% from 82.3%. Gasoline stocks still rose by 10.5 million barrels to 257.3 million barrels, since demand fell faster. The lesson is that a record output cut can still leave stocks higher when demand falls faster.

1. Collect and edit: reports cover Friday 7:01 a.m. to Friday 7:00 a.m. and flagged cells are checked with respondents.
2. Impute gaps: missing reports use exponential smoothing, a weighted average of the latest report and prior prediction. For example, 0.8 times 100 plus 0.2 times 95 gives 99, used like a real report.
3. Expand sample: weekly sums are scaled to full coverage by the lagged monthly census ratio, monthly total divided by monthly sample times weekly sum. In symbols, Wt equals Mt divided by Ms times Ws. For example, 300,000 divided by 270,000 times 67,500 gives 75,000 for the week.
4. Balance gasoline: for blending components and ethanol, supply is production plus imports minus stock change, while use is blender input plus exports. The adjustment is supply minus use for both streams. For example, 53 minus 48 gives 5 and 19 minus 18 gives 1, for a total of 6.
5. Aggregate and present: published U.S. output equals refinery plus blender output plus adjustment, in thousand barrels per day. Changes use unrounded numbers and show weekly difference, % moves and 4-week averages, with no seasonal adjustment.
6. Review and release: editors lock the tables after checks and director review for Wednesday 10:30 a.m. Eastern release.