May gasoline production sets record

Petroleum News Alaska Staff

The American Petroleum Institute said June 12 that the nation’s refineries set new gasoline production records in May at nearly 8.6 million barrels per day, an all-time high. Refineries also processed more crude oil and other inputs in May than in any prior May. Utilization of refinery capacity exceeded 95 percent, the highest rate since last August.

Domestic gasoline deliveries changed only modestly. Deliveries of distillate fuel oil and residual fuel oil continued to rise, while deliveries of jet fuel and “other oils” dropped from year-ago levels.

Imports of crude oil and products continued to rise in May. At 11.8 million barrels per day, the month’s imports exceeded year-ago levels by more than 7 percent and amounted to more than 60 percent of domestic petroleum use. Gasoline imports (including blending components) rose at double-digit rates, and product imports overall rose by about 15 percent. Crude oil imports also increased.

Crude oil inventories continued to rise during the month, adding another 4 million barrels to earlier builds that now total some 45 million barrels over the past three months. High production at refineries helped to boost gasoline inventories by 9 million barrels, the largest gasoline inventory build for May in 15 years. This put gasoline inventories slightly ahead of year-ago levels.

For the third month in a row, domestic crude oil production rose compared with the year-ago level in May. Alaska production saw its first year-over-year increase since 1996, and that, combined with a slight increase for the Lower 48, resulted in a year-to-year increase for total crude oil production of about 1 percent. API said Alaska production averaged 986,000 barrels a day, compared to 966,000 barrels a day for May 2000, an increase of 2.1 percent.

Lower 48 crude oil production averaged 4.866 million barrels a day in May, up 0.6 percent from an average of 4.824 million barrels a day in May 2000.