US Crude Oil Inventory Chart

About this series

What the commercial barrel count represents.

An accounting identity, not a forecast

This series is a weekly accounting identity made visible. Crude stocks rise when domestic production plus imports exceed refinery runs plus exports, and fall when the reverse holds. Every barrel in the number arrived through one of those channels, which is why the figure responds to refinery maintenance seasons and export economics as much as to anything happening at the wellhead.

Why the SPR stays out

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is deliberately excluded from the seasonal commercial curve. SPR volumes move on government policy — releases during supply disruptions, repurchases when prices are favourable — so the commercial and policy stocks answer different questions. But separation can hide an offset: a commercial build alongside an equal SPR draw leaves total US crude stocks flat. The weekly reconciliation above therefore adds both changes while keeping the commercial curve intact.

Less seasonal, narrower bands

Crude inventories are also less seasonal than natural gas, so the five-year band here is narrower and deviations from it carry a different weight. A five percent surplus in crude is a more notable dislocation than the same percentage in gas, where the annual cycle is far larger. Read the percentile figure alongside the percentage for that reason.

Read the band, not the level

On the history view the level is drawn against its own five-year seasonal average, and the shaded band between them is the surplus or deficit. That gap is the part worth watching: a level of 400 million barrels means little on its own, but 30 million below the norm for that week is a tight market and 30 million above it is a comfortable one. Read the band against the WTI and Brent lines rather than reading the level alone.

Why WTI and Brent both appear

The two benchmarks are shown together because their spread is informative in itself. WTI prices crude at Cushing and Brent prices waterborne crude in the North Sea, so when the two pull apart the binding constraint is usually US pipeline or export logistics rather than world supply. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which this series excludes, has its own page.

Flows are rates, not inventory

The optional exports and net-imports lines show weekly crude flows on a separate million-barrels-per-day axis. Exports are barrels leaving the US; net imports are gross imports minus those exports. They should not be added together, and neither is a stock change. Read them as possible contributors to the weekly inventory move, alongside production and refinery runs—not as an accounting explanation on their own.

Track the Strategic Petroleum Reserve separately → How the five-year curve is calculated →