Cushing slips to 21.5 million, and our 18 September pass points back up.
Tanks at the WTI delivery point closed the week to 11 September at 21.5 million barrels, a second straight draw that leaves the hub 1.5 million above the level the trade treats as tank bottoms. Our 18 September pass reads 22.5 million, a build of about a million barrels, five days before the EIA reports that week. This page records the number every week. The chart panel holds the history back to 2019.
Three years of Cushing storage levels
Full panel →| Week ending | Million bbl | Change | Filled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Sep 2026 | 21.5 | −0.34 | 21.9% |
| 4 Sep 2026 | 21.8 | −0.68 | 22.3% |
| 28 Aug 2026 | 22.5 | +0.08 | 23.0% |
| 21 Aug 2026 | 22.4 | +1.18 | 22.9% |
| 14 Aug 2026 | 21.3 | −1.31 | 21.7% |
| 7 Aug 2026 | 22.6 | +1.61 | 23.0% |
| 31 Jul 2026 | 21.0 | +2.36 | 21.4% |
Why Cushing inventories matter
Three reasons this one tank farm in Payne County, Oklahoma sets a global benchmark.
It is the delivery point for WTI
NYMEX light sweet crude settles by physical delivery into Cushing tankage. Whoever is short at expiry must produce barrels there. Stocks at the hub are the collateral behind the world's most traded oil contract.
Tank bottoms are not inventory
Floating-roof tanks cannot be drained. A few hundred thousand barrels per tank sit below the suction line as unpumpable heel. Reported stocks include it; the market cannot use it. Roughly 20 of the 98 million barrels of capacity is functionally inert.
It is a chokepoint, not a reservoir
Permian and Bakken barrels transit Cushing on the way to Gulf Coast refiners and export docks. When the hub runs thin, the constraint is not global supply. It is the operating room inside a fixed set of tanks.
Cushing oil storage, in plain terms
What are Cushing crude oil inventories?
Cushing crude oil inventories are the barrels of crude held in the tank farm at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the NYMEX WTI contract. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports the level every week. Because settlement of the WTI contract runs through this tankage, the Cushing figure is followed separately from total U.S. crude oil storage.
How much oil is stored at Cushing?
The latest EIA print, for the week ending 11 September 2026 and published on 16 September, put Cushing at 21.5 million barrels: 21.9% of the 98 million barrels of working capacity used here, and a draw of 0.3 million on the week. That leaves 1.5 million barrels between the reported level and the tank bottoms line. The figure here is updated with each print.
How much oil can Cushing hold?
Working capacity at the hub is taken here as 98 million barrels. That is a stated assumption rather than an EIA figure, used so that a percentage filled can be quoted consistently from week to week. It is a yardstick rather than a hard ceiling, and it is held fixed here so that one week can be compared with another.
When does the EIA publish the Cushing inventory number?
Publication is Wednesday at 10:30 US Eastern, in the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report. When a public holiday shifts the reporting week, it moves to Thursday at the same hour. Cushing Watch also carries a satellite-derived estimate of the level, published ahead of the official print.
What are tank bottoms at Cushing?
Tank bottoms are the crude that cannot be pumped out: the heel below the suction line in a floating-roof tank, plus the volume needed to keep the connecting lines full. Cushing Watch takes that as 20 million barrels, a market convention rather than a figure operators publish, so it is better read as a band than a hard threshold. The practical consequence is that operability tightens well before any tank is empty.
Is Cushing running out of oil?
No. The lowest reading in the series, which begins in 2018, is 18.6 million barrels, in the week ending 24 July 2026, and the hub built again the week after. A thin hub is a question of operability and pricing rather than national supply. Cushing is where barrels pass between the producing basins and the Gulf Coast, and when the tanks run low it shows up in prompt WTI spreads and in blending flexibility at the hub, not in the barrels available to the wider market.
Why do Cushing inventories move the WTI price?
Settlement is physical. Whoever is still short WTI at expiry has to make barrels available in tankage at Cushing, and whoever is still long has to take them. When there are few usable barrels at the hub, sourcing them for delivery costs more, and that cost shows up first in prompt time spreads rather than in the flat price. The weekly figure is the market's running count of what is there to deliver against.
Estimate Wednesday's Cushing number ahead of the print
A satellite read on the week's Cushing level, anchored on the last EIA print and delivered before the next one. Measured against 365 satellite passes since 2018, the estimate misses the official number by 3.3% on average and 2.7% in the median week. Full weekly history comes with it.
| Mean error vs. EIA print | 3.2% |
| Delivery | As soon as measured |
| Formats | API · CSV · XLSX |
| History | 2018 to date |
| Seats | One, or desk-wide |
| Monthly | $500 |
| Annual | $3,000 |