U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), dropped by 3.1 million barrels from the week ending October 9 to the week ending October 16.That’s what the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report, which was released on October 21 and included data for the week ending October 16.
Commercial crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, came in at 412.517 million barrels on October 16, 415.577 million barrels on October 9, and 422.824 million barrels on October 17, 2025, the report revealed. Crude oil stocks dropped by 0.7 percent week on week and by 2.4 percent year on year, the report outlined.
Crude oil in the SPR stood at 282.7 million barrels on October 16, 283.0 million barrels on October 9, and 408.6 million barrels on October 17, 2025, the report revealed. The October 16 figure represented a decrease of 0.1 percent week on week and a decrease of 30.8 percent year on year, the report highlighted.
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 1.498 billion barrels on October 16, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks were down 8.8 million barrels week on week and down 195.0 million barrels year on year, the report revealed.
“Commercial crude oil inventories (excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased 3.1 million barrels to 412.5 million barrels, three percent below the five-year average,” the EIA noted in its report.
“Gasoline inventories decreased 3.0 million barrels, five percent below the five-year average. Distillate inventories increased 1.7 million barrels, nine percent below the five-year average,” it added.
“Propane/propylene inventories decreased 0.5 million barrels, 13 percent above the five-year average,” it continued.
In its report, the EIA highlighted that, for the week ending October 16, U.S. refineries processed 16.6 million barrels per day, “up 34,000 barrels per day from the previous week, at 93.4 percent capacity utilization”. Gasoline output averaged 9.8 million barrels per day and distillate production increased to 5.2 million barrels per day, the report pointed out.
The EIA also noted in its report that crude oil imports decreased by 291,000 barrels per day to 5.8 million barrels per day, but added that the four-week average of 6.1 million barrels per day was 2.8 percent above the year-ago level. Gasoline imports averaged 281,000 barrels per day and distillate imports averaged 117,000 barrels per day, the EIA highlighted.
Over the past four weeks, total product supplied averaged 21.1 million barrels per day, according to the EIA’s report, which pointed out that this was up 3.2 percent year over year.
“The four-week average for gasoline product supplied increased 1.5 percent year over year to 8.7 million barrels per day, while the four-week average for distillate product supplied decreased 2.4 percent to 3.9 million barrels per day,” the EIA said.
“The four-week average for jet fuel product supplied increased 1.4 percent year over year,” it added.
In a statement posted on his X page on Thursday highlighting some “key takeaways” from the EIA’s latest weekly petroleum status report, Ole Hansen, Saxo Bank Head of Commodity Strategy, noted that “U.S. crude and gasoline inventories both fell by around three million barrels, with the latter dropping to its lowest seasonal level since 2014”.
“Distillate stocks, meanwhile, rose by 1.6 million barrels after hitting a record seasonal low, probably supported by a 0.6 million barrel per day sharp drop in demand to 3.7 million barrels per day,” he added.
“Refineries operated at 93 percent of capacity, the highest seasonal utilization rate since 1997, while crude processing reached a record seasonal high,” he said.