US Crude Storage Outlook - Ugly Comp Last Year

For the week ending Jan 5, we have a crude draw of 4.16 million bbls. This includes an SPR build of ~600k bbls.

The first week of 2023 saw a massive crude storage build near ~19 million bbls. Keep in mind that as we ended 2022, there was a massive polar vortex that materially disrupted US crude oil production, which in turn, disrupted US crude storage figures.

Thankfully, there are no similar disruptions this time. So casting aside the usual tax games being played by refineries at year-end, we think EIA's crude figure will be close to our estimate.