Declining demand leaves US commercial crude oil inventories at all-time high

Following the decline in demand brought about by stay-at-home orders and the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that the nation’s commercial crude oil inventories reached an all-time high in June at 541 million barrels.

That figure held as of the week of June 19, putting inventories at 5 million barrels over the previous mark, which was set in March 2017. These inventories were still a long way off from the nation’s total available storage capacity, however. Even at these record amounts, only 62 percent of that capacity was filled.

The data, chronicled in the EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report, notably does not include crude oil held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which sat at 654 million barrels over the same period. Total commercial crude oil inventories instead include volumes in refineries, tank farms, and some of the crude oil held in pipelines, as well as stocks in transit by water and rail. That said, estimations of the storage capacity utilization do without the pipeline fill and stocks in transit to better reflect working storage capacity.

Most of the capacity and inventories are being held in the Gulf Coast, alongside much of the nation’s refining capacity. Total commercial inventories in the region increased by 64 million barrels since March when a state of national emergency was declared. Like the overall totals, this has led to record numbers: 308 million barrels of crude oil.