EIA Refinery Crude Runs Change

EIA Refinery Crude Runs Change is the week-over-week change in U.S. crude oil refinery inputs in thousand barrels per day. Crude inputs mean domestic plus foreign crude including lease condensate fed into all processing units. The source is the EIA, the statistical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, through its Weekly Petroleum Status Report. Capacity and utilization appear alongside it, and it is not fuel output, utilization, imports, stocks, or demand, with no seasonal adjustment or threshold.

The report week runs from 7:01 AM Eastern Friday to 7:00 AM Eastern the next Friday, with stocks measured as of 7 AM Friday. Respondents file by 5:00 PM Eastern Monday, tables and highlights appear at 10:30 AM Eastern Wednesday, and the full report follows at 1:00 PM. Holiday weeks are normally delayed by 1 day, and each release shows weekly change, 4-week average, year-ago comparison, utilization, fuel output, stocks, trade, and prices. Errors over 5% must be resubmitted, revisions appear only for substantive supply effects in the next release, and traders watch it as timely data.

Moves reflect outages, maintenance, and capacity shifts, seen by region.

• U.S. Crude Oil Inputs: total domestic plus foreign crude fed into all processing units.
• Crude Oil Inputs by PADD: same input split across 5 districts, showing which region drove the national change.
• Gross Inputs: broader feedstock into atmospheric distillation units only, including crude, other oils, unfinished oils, and gas liquids, excluding downstream units.
• Operable Capacity: latest monthly capacity that can run or restart within 30 days, in barrels per calendar day.
• Utilization (%): gross inputs divided by operable capacity, as a %, showing a different concept from the change itself.
• Companion Fuel Output: finished gasoline, jet fuel, distillate for diesel, residual fuel, propane, and ethanol, showing supply effects.

For the week ending February 19, 2021, U.S. crude inputs averaged 12.2 million barrels per day, down 2.6 million on the week at 68.6% utilization. Gulf Coast inputs fell by 2,263 thousand barrels per day of the 2,589 national drop, while other regions moved between plus 56 and minus 413. Gross inputs fell by 2.7 million to 12.6 million, and EIA linked shutdowns to power losses, gas constraints, and unit damage. About 3.7 million barrels per day, or 20% of capacity, was shut in at the February 17, 2021 peak. Commercial stocks rose only 1.3 million barrels because imports fell 1.3 million per day, and lower runs would cut crude demand and fuel production.

1. Collect weekly reports: Refiners file Form EIA-800, the weekly refinery survey, for the Friday-to-Friday week. Product code 050 covers all crude to all units, corrected to 60 degrees less sediment and water.
2. Edit and impute missing data: Inconsistent reports are checked, and gaps are filled with smoothed averages of prior weeks, with alpha between 0 and 1. Prior values matter more for inputs than for imports.
3. Expand the sample to the universe: Weekly totals are scaled by the ratio of full monthly totals to monthly totals from sampled firms. For example, if sampled weekly inputs are 70,000 thousand barrels, sampled monthly 300,000, and full monthly 330,000, the weekly estimate is 77,000 thousand barrels. The daily average is 11,000 thousand barrels per day.
4. Convert to a daily rate and change: Weekly total divided by 7 gives thousand barrels per day, and change is current week minus prior week. For example, 11,000 minus 11,400 equals a change of -400 thousand barrels per day. It appears with 4-week average and year-ago comparison.
5. Compute utilization separately: Utilization is gross inputs divided by latest monthly operable capacity, times 100, from unrounded numbers. For example, 11,300 divided by 16,000 equals 70.6%.