When is the EIA weekly petroleum status report released?
The EIA weekly petroleum status report (WPSR) is released on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. EIA’s schedule page says “The standard release time and day of the week will be at 10:30 a.m. eastern time on Wednesday with the following exceptions.” The exceptions are holiday weeks. In 2025, for example, because of Columbus Day the report for the week ending October 10 moved to Thursday, October 16, at 12:00 p.m.
Check EIA’s release schedule before you plan around a Wednesday. The report covers the week that ended the prior Friday, so by the time you read it the numbers are five days old. It shows which way inventory and demand are heading. Today’s rack price comes from your supplier.
What is actually in the report?
The WPSR is a set of numbered tables (1 through 14, plus 5A, with Tables 10 and 13 retired). They cover stocks of crude oil, motor gasoline, ethanol, distillates, jet fuel, residual fuel oil and propane, along with refinery inputs, production, imports, exports and spot prices. You do not need all of it. For a wholesaler, a few lines carry most of the decision: distillate and gasoline stocks, refinery utilization and product supplied, plus one ratio you work out yourself.
What does each line mean for a wholesaler?
Each line answers a different question about next week’s exposure. Read them together: one line alone misleads.
| Line | What EIA is measuring | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Distillate stocks (diesel and heating oil) | Barrels of distillate in storage, week over week | A build suggests easing supply. A draw suggests rack prices have more room to rise than fall. This is the line that most shapes your cover decision. |
| Gasoline stocks | Same measure for total motor gasoline | A draw is not automatically strong demand. Read it with the seasonal grade changeover (see below). |
| Refinery utilization | EIA’s “Percent Utilization” (the glossary’s refinery utilization rate): gross input to atmospheric crude distillation units divided by operable capacity | High and rising usually means more product is on the way. Falling usually means fewer barrels, and a higher chance a supplier puts you on allocation. |
| Product supplied | EIA’s proxy for consumption: it “approximately represents consumption of petroleum products because it measures the disappearance of these products” | Rising demand with falling stocks is the tightest combination. One week is noisy, so compare it with the four-week average. |
| Days of cover (your arithmetic) | Not an EIA line: divide stocks by four-week average product supplied yourself | A shrinking number means the same stock covers fewer days of demand. Watch which way it moves week to week. |
Product supplied is not sales. EIA builds it by subtraction: field production plus refinery production plus imports (and a few other items), minus stock change, refinery inputs and exports. Exports in particular can swing it, so a surprising demand number sometimes just reflects a surprising export number.
How do I turn the numbers into a buy decision?
Compare the direction of each line to its recent trend, then pick the response. These are rules of thumb, not forecasts.
| Distillate stocks | Utilization | Product supplied | Reasonable posture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drawing | Falling | Rising | Extend cover now. Confirm allocation terms with your suppliers before the next lift. |
| Drawing | Rising | Flat | Hold your cover. Refiners are responding, so expect the draw to slow. |
| Building | Rising | Falling | Buy to need. Your rack exposure is more likely to ease than climb. |
| Building | Falling | Rising | Mixed. Watch the next two reports before committing. |
Here is a worked example with made-up numbers, not a real release. Say distillate stocks fall 3 million barrels for the second week running, refinery utilization slips from 92% to 90%, and product supplied rises. You carry 10 days of cover at a 40,000-gallon-per-day throughput, so about 400,000 gallons. If you think the market is heading higher over the next two weeks, buying another 5 days (200,000 gallons) now locks in today’s rack, and you pay to carry and store those gallons. Waiting means you pay next week’s rack on those gallons, whatever it is. The report can’t say which is cheaper. It points to the bigger risk.
What does the report not tell you?
It does not tell you your rack price, your terminal’s allocation or your regional basis. It is mostly a national read, with some tables broken out by PAD District, a broad regional grouping. A national build can hide a tight district, so look at the PAD District tables for yours before acting on the headline.
It also lags. Everything in it describes the week before. Treat it as one input beside your supplier’s allocation notices and your own tank readings. When a terminal runs tight, pipeline line space is one upstream reason the report will not show.
Why do gasoline numbers look odd in the fall?
Because gasoline switches from summer grade to winter grade in the fall, and that changeover can be part of the story behind a stock move. If you are reading a gasoline draw in October, check the RVP changeover before assuming driving picked up.
How Energy Connect handles it
Energy Connect does not publish or interpret the EIA report. The report is a public input to your buying decision, so keep reading it at eia.gov. If the week’s numbers change what you charge your own customers, you can post a price for each terminal on Energy Connect with a start date and an optional end date. A price scheduled for the future is not shown to buyers until it takes effect.