Waiting and Waiting for Demand

Refineries are ingenious places. Just pour in crude oil and then wait for their output of high quality fuels and other valuable products to appear. Synchronizing both overall output volumes and the portions of each fuel grade with swings in fuel demand, however, can challenge refiners. Unseasonably warm weather along the US East Coast lately has left refiners with distillate inventories at comfortable seasonal levels but also has confronted them with gasoline inventories that are below their seasonal low over the previous five years.