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Eia Refinery Utilization Drift

Updated weeklyData needs: mediumlong only

2002

Extends: Considine, T. J. (2002). "Inventories and market power in the world crude oil market." Energy Economics 24(4), 343-364. Novel refiner-equity application (alphactor 2026-05-20). Executed signal uses the paper's crude-inventory dimension (PET.WCESTUS1.W), not refinery utilization; the inventory basis is closer to the cited paper than the original utilization gloss.

Read the paper →

In plain terms

When US crude inventories start drawing down faster than usual (a sign refineries are running hot), refiner stocks (VLO/MPC/PSX) tend to outperform for a couple of weeks.

How it works

PROXY (disclosed): the EIA weekly refinery-utilization series is not ingested, so the executed signal is the negated 2nd-difference of US commercial crude stocks (PET.WCESTUS1.W) as a throughput-surge proxy. Accelerating inventory draws imply higher refinery run rates and a stronger crack spread, so the family goes LONG refiner equities (VLO/MPC/PSX/DK/HFC/INT/PBF/PARR). Surprise is measured vs a 5y same-isoweek mean, then normalized by a 52w rolling z.

Live results

0 times picked on its own · 1 times inside a blend (1 beat the stock) · updated 2026-07-06

This strategy is a frequent ingredient in blends that combine a few strategies on one stock. It has contributed to 1 such blended picks (1 of which beat simply holding the stock). Picking it on its own is only one of the ways it shows up.

How its picks scored vs. buy & hold

Each pick is graded on a recent year it was never tuned on, against simply owning the same stock

Where its edge concentrates

Share of picks in each company-size group that beat buy & hold

How often it trades

Active vs. patient. Bars on the left mean it waits for rare setups; bars on the right mean it trades often

Return vs. buy & hold

How much each pick beat or trailed simply owning the stock over the test year (extreme microcap moves trimmed)

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Data dependencies

Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.
Eia crude storage
A data feed this strategy reads, refreshed on its normal schedule.

Expected edge

Reported return: Not reported in paper (structural crude-inventory/market-power study, no equity alpha). The prior "150-300 bps over 10-20d" figure was an internal expectation for the unimplemented utilization variant, not a paper result.
Tested over: T+1 to T+20d

Internal expectation only (no paper benchmark): crack-spread sensitivity of refiner equities to a >1 sigma throughput-surge proxy reading, over 5-20d holds.

Example tickers where this is likely to fire

VLO MPC PSX HFC

Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.

Related families

Eia Crude Storage SurpriseReal-World & Alternative Data

EIA crude-storage surprise (vs consensus) → 1-5d energy move.

Eia Natgas Storage SurpriseReal-World & Alternative Data

Every Thursday EIA publishes US natgas storage. If the build is smaller than expected, natgas E&Ps (EQT, RRC, CHK) jump for 1-5 days.

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