For quite some time now, I have been publishing a weekly series of articles to this site discussing the trend in oil inventories as found in the weekly report from the Energy Information Administration. Regrettably, I have been somewhat lax in publishing these reports as of late so this edition of my report will include the past several weeks. Fortunately, the overall development in inventories over the past several weeks has been relatively consistent. Gasoline inventories have also shown a notable trend. Both of these trends will be discussed in this article.

At the end of the week ended July 24, 2015, the nation’s inventories of commercial crude oil contained a total of 459.7 million barrels of oil. This continues the string of declines that has been occurring since April, although these declines have not been steady and there were a few weeks in which inventories increased. This show us that, at least during the summer driving season, the nation’s demand for oil is clearly greater than the supply of it. With that said though, the nation’s inventories do contain considerably more oil than they did at the same time last year. At the end of the same week last year, the nation’s inventories of commercial crude oil contained a total of 367.4 million barrels of crude oil.

Gasoline inventories, meanwhile, have been relatively steady since the beginning of June. At the end of the week ended July 24, 2015, the nation’s inventories of motor gasoline contained a total of 215.9 million barrels of gasoline. This is a very slight decline from the 216.3 million barrels of motor gasoline that these same inventories contained at the end of the week ended July 17, 2015. Unlike crude oil inventories, the current level of the nation’s motor gasoline inventories is relatively in line with last year’s levels. At the end of the corresponding week of last year, the nation’s motor gasoline inventories contained a total of 218.2 million barrels of gasoline.

One reason why the nation’s inventories of motor gasoline declined week-over-week may be that the nation’s oil refineries supplied less gasoline to the market during the latest week. During the four-week period ended July 24, 2015, the nation’s oil refineries supplied an average of 9.506 million barrels of gasoline to the market every day.  This is lower than the average of 9.604 million barrels per day supplied during the four-week period ended July 17, 2015. Despite the decline though, the nation’s refineries still supplied more gasoline to the market than during the corresponding period of last year. During that period, the nation’s oil refineries supplied an average of 8.948 million barrels of gasoline per day to the market.

This decline in production comes in spite of the fact that the nation’s refineries processed more crude oil than in the previous week. During the four-week period ended July 24, 2015, the nation’s oil refineries processed an average of 16.763 million barrels of crude oil per day. This compares to the daily average of 16.706 million barrels per day during the four-week period ended July 17, 2015. As has been the case for quite some time now, the nation’s refineries are processing more crude oil than in the corresponding period of last year. During that period, the nation’s refineries processed an average of 16.507 million barrels of crude oil per day.

Ultimately, we can determine that despite the decline in inventories this week, the country continues to have oil inventories at historic highs. This is likely to continue to exert downward pressure on oil prices and thus a recovery in oil related assets does not appear to be coming in the near future.