U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 6.9 million barrels from the week ending March 13 to the week ending March 20.
That’s what the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report, which was released on March 25 and included data for the week ending March 20.
The EIA report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 456.2 million barrels on March 20, 449.3 million barrels on March 13, and 433.6 million barrels on March 21, 2025. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 415.4 million barrels on March 20 and March 13, and 396.1 million barrels on March 21, 2025, the report showed.
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 1.691 billion barrels on March 20, according to the EIA report. Total petroleum stocks were up 8.3 million barrels week on week and up 90.9 million barrels year on year, the report pointed out.“At 456.2 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 0.1 percent above the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest weekly petroleum status report.“Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 2.6 million barrels from last week and are three percent above the five year average for this time of year. Both finished gasoline and blending components inventories decreased last week,” it added.
“Distillate fuel inventories increased by 3.0 million barrels last week and are about 0.4 percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 0.5 million barrels from last week and are 59 percent above the five year average for this time of year,” it continued.
U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.6 million barrels per day during the week ending March 20, according to the EIA report, which highlighted that this was 366,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average.“Refineries operated at 92.9 percent of their operable capacity last week,” the EIA stated in the report.“Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.7 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased by 158,000 barrels per day last week, averaging 5.0 million barrels per day,” it added.
U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.5 million barrels per day last week, the report noted, pointing out that this was a decrease of 730,000 barrels per day from the previous week.