Story By Andreas Exarheas |RigZone.com| U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 6.2 million barrels from the week ending March 21 to the week ending March 28, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report.
That report was released on April 2 and included data for the week ending March 28. The EIA report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 439.8 million barrels on March 28, 433.6 million barrels on March 21, and 451.4 million barrels on March 29, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 396.4 million barrels on March 28, 396.1 million barrels on March 21, and 363.6 million barrels on March 29, 2024, the report outlined.
Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene-type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.605 billion barrels on March 28, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks were up 5.6 million barrels week on week and up 27.2 million barrels year on year, the report revealed.
“At 439.8 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about four percent below the five-year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its report.
“Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 1.6 million barrels from last week and are two percent above the five-year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased and blending components inventories decreased last week,” it added.
“Distillate fuel inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels last week and are about six percent below the five-year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.0 million barrels from last week and are eight percent below the five-year average for this time of year,” it continued.
The EIA went on to note in the report that U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.6 million barrels per day during the week ending March 28, 192,000 barrels per day less than the previous week’s average.
“Refineries operated at 86.0 percent of their operable capacity last week,” the EIA said in the report.
“Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.3 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 4.7 million barrels per day,” it added.
According to the report, U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.5 million barrels per day last week, an increase of 271,000 barrels per day from the previous week.
“Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 5.9 million barrels per day, 6.3 percent less than the same four-week period last year,” the EIA said in its report.
“Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 748,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 149,000 barrels per day,” it added.
The EIA stated in its report that total products supplied over the last four weeks averaged 20.1 million barrels a day, down by 1.2 percent from the same period last year.
“Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.8 million barrels a day, down by 1.9 percent from the same period last year,” it added.
“Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.8 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 3.7 percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 4.2 percent compared with the same four-week period last year,” it went on to state.
The EIA also noted in its report that the national average retail price for regular gasoline increased to $3.162 per gallon on March 31, 2025, which it pointed out was “$0.047 above last week’s price, and $0.355 less than the year-ago price”.
“The national average retail diesel fuel price increased $0.025 to $3.592 per gallon, $0.404 lower than the price one year ago,” the EIA added in the report.
According to the AAA Fuel Prices website, the average U.S. regular gasoline price is $3.260 per gallon and the average U.S. diesel price is $3.638 per gallon, as of April 3.
In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Monday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists revealed that they were forecasting that U.S. crude inventories would be up by 4.2 million barrels for the week ending March 28.
“This follows a 3.3 million barrel draw for the week ending March 21 and compares to our initial expectation for a larger crude build this week,” the strategists said in that report.
In its previous weekly petroleum status report, which was released on March 26 and included data for the week ending March 21, the EIA highlighted that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, decreased by 3.3 million barrels from the week ending March 14 to the week ending March 21.
That EIA report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 433.6 million barrels on March 21, 437.0 million barrels on March 14, and 448.2 million barrels on March 22, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 396.1 million barrels on March 21, 395.9 million barrels on March 14, and 363.1 million barrels on March 22, 2024, the report revealed. The EIA report highlighted that data may not add up to totals due to independent rounding.
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