Interesting Data Point

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly data came out as usual. The import picture continues to decline at roughly 8% for the year to date period when compared to last year's to the same date (and 9% for the most recent 4 weeks).

Notice on Table 1 that Net Product Imports are down 39.6%. Product imports (Gasoline and Diesel but mostly Gasoline are down to only 734k per day. I can remember periods of 2mm+ per day. It would seem that refining capacity must be so much greater than supply, and it would also seem that we are getting to the point where ethanol is now over 10% by volume of finished motor gasoline (and that REAL petroleum based gasoline supplies are now down to 8.1 million bpd).

If anybody has any info on what that "Product stocks W/D or added" line... I would appreciate it.

The data does not jive with the GDP numbers.