Cushing crude oil inventories, week by week
Seven weeks in a band, and a sharper satellite record
Cushing has printed between 21.0 and 22.6 million barrels for seven straight weeks, since climbing out of the 18.6 million low of the week to 24 July. This week's draw of 0.3 million, the second in a row, takes it to 21.5 million, 1.5 million above the 20 million floor and 2.1 million below the same week last year.
Our 18 September read of 22.5 million implies a build of about a million barrels, and the gain is concentrated in the southern half of the hub: in the twelve days since our previous pass, 53 tanks there rose by more than ten points of fill, against 35 that fell.
This week we re-measured the whole satellite record since 2018. Each tank is now located from its traced outline, and the reference that turns radar returns into a fill level was rebuilt for the southern tanks. The calibration is unchanged. Scored against every EIA print, the satellite-only read now errs by 5.8% on average, down from 6.7%, and the anchored estimate holds at 3.3%. Past weekly pages keep the figures they were published with.
Year on year the hub is down 2.1 million barrels, from 23.6 million in the same week of 2025. The seasonal envelope below is the cleaner comparison: 2025 held above the floor through the whole summer, and this year's line has sat under the five-year band since the spring.
Below the floor, spreads price the tank, not the curve
Five of the 37 weeks of 2026 have printed under 20 million barrels, the last of them the week to 24 July. On previous approaches to this zone, prompt WTI time spreads widened into backwardation within a month, independent of what total U.S. commercial stocks were doing.
What would change the read: a sustained run above 22 million, which would restore blending flexibility at the hub, or a slide back under 20 million, which would take it away again.
Seasonal envelope: this year against the last five
Last twelve weeks
| Week ending | EIA | Our est. | W/W | Y/Y | Filled | Vs. floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Sep 2026 | 21,482 | 22,840 | −342 | −2,079 | 21.9% | +1,482 |
| 04 Sep 2026 | 21,824 | – | −684 | −2,033 | 22.3% | +1,824 |
| 28 Aug 2026 | 22,508 | 20,979 | +80 | −1,714 | 23.0% | +2,508 |
| 21 Aug 2026 | 22,428 | – | +1,176 | −204 | 22.9% | +2,428 |
| 14 Aug 2026 | 21,252 | 22,541 | −1,314 | −2,218 | 21.7% | +1,252 |
| 07 Aug 2026 | 22,566 | 19,680 | +1,611 | −485 | 23.0% | +2,566 |
| 31 Jul 2026 | 20,955 | – | +2,356 | −2,051 | 21.4% | +955 |
| 24 Jul 2026 | 18,599 | 20,054 | −771 | −3,954 | 19.0% | −1,401 |
| 17 Jul 2026 | 19,370 | – | −674 | −2,493 | 19.8% | −630 |
| 10 Jul 2026 | 20,044 | – | +430 | −1,364 | 20.5% | +44 |
| 03 Jul 2026 | 19,614 | – | −52 | −1,581 | 20.0% | −386 |
| 26 Jun 2026 | 19,666 | 19,387 | +709 | −1,065 | 20.1% | −334 |
Method and caveats
- Official series
- The official Cushing crude oil inventory series: EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report, series W_EPC0_SAX_YCUOK_MBBL. Ending stocks in thousand barrels, Friday close, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Shown here from January 2019, and plotted as a step: each print holds until the next one lands, the same way the satellite line is drawn.
- Our estimate
- Floating-roof measurement from satellite imagery, converted to a fill percentage of surveyed tank volume. Cadence follows the imaging pass, roughly every six to twelve days; between passes the line is held flat at the last reading rather than interpolated. Mean absolute error against the nearest EIA print, 365 passes from 2018 to date, is 3.3%: median 2.7%, ninth decile 6.7%, mean bias +55 thousand barrels. The band on the chart spans the middle 80% of those readings. Single weeks miss by more.
- Working capacity
- Taken as a constant 98 million barrels. That is a stated assumption rather than an EIA figure, held fixed so that one week can be compared with another, which makes fill percentages indicative rather than exact.
- Operational floor
- 20 million barrels, a market convention for unpumpable tank bottoms and minimum line fill. Operators do not publish a figure; treat it as a band, not a threshold.
- Revisions
- EIA does not revise this series after publication. No smoothing, interpolation, or seasonal adjustment is applied here.