The growth in both crude and fuel supplies coincided with the official end of the summer driving period in the United States last week, marked by the September 4 Labor Day holiday. Prior to that, refiners had drawn nearly 20 million barrels of crude from inventory over a period of four weeks as they maxed out fuel processing for the summer driving period. Refiners had also maintained an extraordinarily high run rate of more than 93% of their capacity during the period.
“Refineries operated at 93.7% of their operable capacity last week,” the agency said in the latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report. “Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.2 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production decreased last week, averaging 5.0 million barrels per day.”