EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocks Change

EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocks Change is the weekly change in crude oil stocks in tank farms in Lincoln, Payne, and Creek counties, Oklahoma. EIA, the statistical and analytical agency inside the U.S. Department of Energy, publishes the series in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report (WPSR). Arabic financial media fold it into EIA weekly crude coverage.

EIA collects it on Form EIA-803 from firms holding 1,000 barrels or more. Responses are counted in thousand barrels and published in million barrels as end-of-period levels. The series excludes the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Cushing is the designated delivery point for NYMEX crude oil futures contracts. A positive change is a build and a negative change is a draw, not a national total.

Each report week runs from 7:01 am Friday to 7:00 am the next Friday; respondents must report by 5:00 pm Eastern Monday. Tables and highlights appear at 10:30 am Eastern each Wednesday for the prior Friday week; the full report follows at 1:00 pm. Holiday weeks slip by one day.

Each release brings narrative highlights plus balance, stocks, imports, and price tables. Selected data also appear in This Week in Petroleum at 1:00 pm Eastern Wednesdays.

Firms must resubmit errors above 5% of the true value. EIA revises published data only when the change would alter understanding of supplies. Each move reads as a build or draw against the 5-year average and range, with no set threshold.

EIA assigns no fixed weights, but its balance sheet links stock changes to five flows.

• Refinery crude inputs: crude oil used by refineries, which draws stocks down.
• Imports: foreign crude entering domestic supply, which lifts stocks.
• Exports: domestic crude shipped abroad, which draws stocks down.
• Domestic production: crude from domestic fields, which feeds supply.
• Transfers and adjustments: balancing items that reconcile measured supply and use.

For the week ending April 17, 2020, released April 22, 2020, Cushing rose to 59.7 million barrels from 55.0. The 4.8-million-barrel build compared with 44.9 a year earlier. Midwest stocks rose by the same 4.8 million barrels, to 152.2 from 147.4. United States crude stocks rose 15.0 million to 518.6, about 9% above the 5-year average.

Refinery inputs were 12.5 million barrels per day at 67.6% capacity, and WTI stood at $18.31. The lesson is that hub builds can signal delivery stress for futures contracts even when national stocks look only moderately high.

1. Collection: EIA collects thousand-barrel stocks by region, plus memo lines for Cushing and Alaskan crude in transit, and checks odd reports with respondents.
2. Imputation: Missing reports are filled by exponential smoothing from each firm's own past reports. It uses Yt = α·yt + (1−α)·Yt−1, with α between 0 and 1 and high for stocks.
3. Ratio estimation: The weekly total is Wt = (Mt / Ms) × Ws. Ws is the current-week sample sum, Ms is that group's monthly sum, and Mt is the all-firms monthly sum. A toy example with simplified numbers: suppose sample reporters hold Ws = 50,000 thousand barrels this week. Those firms held Ms = 48,000 in the latest monthly census, while all firms held Mt = 60,000 that month. Then Wt = 62,500 thousand barrels (about 62.5 million). If last week was 60,000 thousand barrels, the change is +2,500 thousand barrels, a 2.5-million-barrel build.
4. Publication: Levels appear in million barrels from unrounded data, and change equals current-week stock minus prior-week stock, with + for build and - for draw. No seasonal adjustment applies; the figures are actual end-of-period barrels.