Reviewed September 2026 against the US Energy Information Administration’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report and the Department of Energy’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve quick facts.

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1. The Number, Right Away
2. What “US Crude Oil Inventories” Actually Counts
3. How the EIA Measures and Reports It Every Week
4. Data Table: Commercial Stocks vs. SPR, Two Snapshots
5. Factors Affecting US Crude Oil Inventories
6. Seasonal Builds and Draws: The 20-Year Pattern
7. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Where It Stands
8. Why a Weekly Number “Surprises” the API and EIA Forecasts
9. Why Farmers and Fuel Buyers Should Track This Number
10. Tool: Estimate Your Weeks of Fuel Cover From the Latest Draw
11. Infrastructure and Construction Exposure
12. Satellite Intelligence and Domestic Resource Supply
13. Resource Video Library
14. FAQ: US Crude Oil Inventories
15. Conclusion: How to Keep This Number Current

US Crude Oil Inventories: Current Levels and What Moves Them

Meta Description: US commercial crude inventories vs. the SPR, week by week: EIA’s latest barrels, the 5-year band, and why the number swings.

US commercial crude oil inventories (excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) stood at 426.4 million barrels for the week ending 11 September 2026, about 2% above the five-year seasonal average for that week, per the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report. That is down from 457.2 million barrels in the week ending 1 May 2026, when stocks sat 1% above their five-year average. Separately, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 284.96 million barrels as of the week ending 18 September 2026 — just under 40% of its 714-million-barrel authorized capacity.

Those two numbers — commercial stocks and the SPR — get reported together in headlines but they behave differently, answer different questions, and update on different clocks. This page tracks both, shows you exactly where to pull this week’s figure yourself, and explains the handful of forces (refinery runs, exports, seasonal demand, and the occasional geopolitical shock) that make the number move.

What “US Crude Oil Inventories” Actually Counts

Crude oil inventory is the volume of crude sitting in storage across the country at a given moment, tallied in millions of barrels. The EIA splits it into two buckets that should never be added together without saying so:

• Commercial crude oil stocks — crude held at refineries, tank farms, and pipeline hubs (notably Cushing, Oklahoma), owned by private companies and traded as ordinary commercial inventory. This is the figure in almost every “crude inventories” headline, and it is what stood at 426.4 million barrels for the week ending 11 September 2026.
• Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) — crude owned by the US government and held for supply emergencies, reported separately. It was 284.96 million barrels for the week ending 18 September 2026, down from 411 million barrels at year-end 2025.
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One barrel is 42 US gallons. If you’re converting EIA’s barrel figures into metric volumes for a non-US audience or a shipping calculation, this guide to how many litres a barrel holds walks through the conversion.

• Key Focus: Whenever a search or headline says “crude oil inventories” with no qualifier, assume commercial stocks. If it says “including SPR” or “total petroleum stocks,” it’s adding the two buckets together — a different, larger number.

How the EIA Measures and Reports It Every Week

The EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report is the source almost every inventory headline traces back to. It releases every Wednesday at 10:30 AM ET (Thursday when a Monday holiday shifts the schedule), built from mandatory surveys of refiners, pipeline operators, and bulk terminal operators.

• Commercial stocks: refineries, terminals, and independent storage, reported weekly in million barrels
• SPR: reported weekly alongside commercial stocks but tracked on a separate line
• Net change driven by domestic production, crude imports and exports, refinery intake, and week-over-week draws or builds

To get this week’s commercial number yourself: visit eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly any Wednesday afternoon and open the current “Weekly Petroleum Status Report” — the headline commercial crude stock figure, in million barrels excluding SPR, is in the first summary table. For the SPR line specifically, the Department of Energy’s SPR Quick Facts page updates on the same weekly cadence.

Data Table: Commercial Stocks vs. SPR, Two 2026 Snapshots

Source: US EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report and Petroleum & Other Liquids Data; figures as dated in the table, not a live feed. Re-pull both lines from the same release date before using them together — mixing a September commercial figure with a December SPR figure will understate the total.

Factors Affecting US Crude Oil Inventories

The commercial number moves for five recurring reasons, and distinguishing them is what separates a one-week blip from a trend:

• Refinery intake: when refineries run harder (higher utilization), they draw down crude stocks faster than imports can replace them, pulling the headline number lower even with flat demand.
• Exports: the US exported crude at roughly 3.7 million barrels per day in 2026, per EIA data — a volume large enough that a week-over-week shift in export loadings alone can move commercial stocks by several million barrels.
• Domestic production: new wells coming online or shut-ins from weather (Gulf Coast hurricanes, Permian freeze events) add or remove barrels before they ever reach a terminal.
• Seasonal demand: gasoline and diesel demand cycles pull refinery runs up in spring and down in winter, covered in detail below.
• Geopolitical disruption: a supply-route closure — the kind that triggered the 172-million-barrel IEA-coordinated SPR release authorized by the Department of Energy on 11 March 2026 in response to a Strait of Hormuz disruption — can move both the commercial and SPR lines within the same reporting cycle.

On the specifics of the Strait of Hormuz episode: the brief behind this article does not contain a figure quantifying how many barrels that closure removed from US domestic commercial inventories beyond the 172-million-barrel IEA-coordinated release itself. If you need that breakdown, the EIA’s Today in Energy series publishes event-specific market analysis in the weeks following a disruption — search it for the event date.

Seasonal Builds and Draws: The 20-Year Pattern

Commercial crude stocks don’t move randomly through the year — the EIA’s own weekly series going back to 2006 (20 years of data) shows a repeating shape: inventories typically build from February through May, as refineries idle for spring maintenance turnarounds ahead of summer driving season, then draw down from June through August as gasoline demand peaks. A second, smaller build runs September through November, followed by a December draw tied to holiday travel and winter heating demand pulling on distillate production.

That pattern is exactly what the two snapshots above show: the 1 May 2026 reading of 457.2 million barrels sits inside the spring build window, and the 11 September 2026 reading of 426.4 million barrels reflects the summer draw plus the start of the autumn build — both still landing above their respective five-year averages (1% and 2%), which tells you 2026 has run a slightly heavier-than-normal stock position through both windows rather than a break from the seasonal shape.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Where It Stands

The SPR held 284.96 million barrels for the week ending 18 September 2026 — the EIA’s Today in Energy series flagged a 4 September 2026 reading of 285.4 million barrels as the lowest SPR level since 1 October 1982. That’s a drop of roughly 126 million barrels from the 411-million-barrel level recorded at 31 December 2025, and it leaves the reserve at just 39.9% of its 714-million-barrel authorized storage capacity.

Two events explain most of that drawdown. First, the Department of Energy authorized release of 172 million barrels as the US share of an IEA-coordinated Strategic Petroleum Reserve release on 11 March 2026, in response to a Strait of Hormuz supply disruption — full details on authorized SPR releases and capacity are on the DOE’s SPR Quick Facts page. Second, cumulative SPR drawdowns across the first nine months of 2026 (January–September) totaled 128 million barrels, per EIA weekly data — a figure that overlaps with, but is not identical to, the March release, since it includes smaller routine and test-sale drawdowns across the year.

For an explainer on what the SPR is for and how the March 2026 drawdown fits its broader history, see this dedicated SPR inventory page.

Why a Weekly Number “Surprises” the API and EIA Forecasts

Two different organizations publish crude stock estimates on two different days, and when they disagree, traders call it a “surprise.” The American Petroleum Institute (API) releases a voluntary industry estimate on Tuesday afternoons, ahead of the EIA’s mandatory Wednesday-morning survey-based report. Because the API’s number comes from a smaller, self-reported sample, it regularly diverges from the EIA’s figure released the next morning — that gap between Tuesday’s API estimate and Wednesday’s EIA print is what “inventory surprise” headlines are describing.

The research behind this article does not contain a specific 2026 instance of an API/EIA divergence with numbers on both sides. If you’re trying to track a specific week’s surprise, compare that week’s API estimate (reported via wire services Tuesday evening) against the EIA figure in the following morning’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report — the EIA report is the one that moves futures markets, since it’s the survey-based, mandatory figure.

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Why Farmers and Fuel Buyers Should Track This Number

US farm operations run on diesel, gasoline, and propane derived directly from the same crude stock reported weekly by EIA — tractors, combines, grain dryers, and irrigation pumps all draw on refined products whose feedstock cost tracks commercial crude inventory levels. Nitrogen fertilizers (ammonia and urea) are also petrochemical-derived, so a tightening inventory position feeds into input costs on both the fuel and fertilizer side at once.

• 🌾 Above-average stocks, like the +2% reading for 11 September 2026, generally correspond to more stable near-term refined product pricing than a below-average print of the same magnitude.
• 📈 A stock draw below the five-year average is the signal that tends to precede refined product price pressure — it’s the seasonal-average comparison, not the raw barrel count, that carries the useful information.
• ⚙ Cascading effect: ammonia and urea production costs are tied to natural gas more directly than crude, but diesel for application and transport tracks crude-derived refined product prices.
• 🚜 Practical step: USDA’s Farm Service Agency and NASS publish input-cost series separately from EIA’s inventory data — cross-referencing the two, rather than relying on inventory levels alone, gives a fuller read on what a given week’s crude stock print means for your input budget.

Tool: Estimate Your Weeks of Fuel Cover From the Latest Draw

This calculator takes the national commercial crude stock trend and scales it to your own operation: enter your typical weekly diesel or gasoline consumption and the current national commercial stock change, and it estimates how many weeks of buffer the national trend implies before refined product prices are likely to feel the tightening — a rough planning signal, not a forecast.

Assumptions: this tool scales a national weekly stock-change rate against your own usage as a rough ratio — it does not model regional price basis, refinery-specific supply, or your local distributor’s contract terms, and it is not a substitute for the EIA’s own weekly report. Default values are the 1 May and 11 September 2026 commercial stock readings from this article; replace them with the current week’s figures from the EIA report linked above for an up-to-date estimate.

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Infrastructure and Construction Exposure

Asphalt for roadbuilding and diesel for heavy equipment are both crude-derived, which is why highway and public-works budgets are sensitive to the same weekly inventory print that moves fuel markets. When commercial stocks run below their five-year average — the opposite of both 2026 readings in this article — refined product tightness has historically preceded higher bid prices on paving and hauling contracts.

• 🛣️ Asphalt for roads: a byproduct of the refining process, so refinery run-rate changes (tracked in the same EIA report) affect asphalt supply as a side effect of crude processing volume.
• 🚆 Heavy transport and freight: diesel-intensive rail and port operations are exposed to the same refined-product price pass-through as farm diesel.
• 🏗️ Construction equipment: off-road diesel consumption for excavation and grading tracks the same commercial barrel supply.

Public works planners can use the same EIA release cadence — every Wednesday — as a scheduling input for procurement timing, comparing the current week’s five-year-average position (currently +2% as of 11 September 2026) against the prior comparable window before locking in fuel-sensitive contract pricing.

Satellite Intelligence and Domestic Resource Supply

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Resource Video Library

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FAQ: US Crude Oil Inventories

Conclusion: How to Keep This Number Current

US commercial crude oil inventories were 426.4 million barrels for the week ending 11 September 2026, 2% above their five-year average — down from 457.2 million barrels (1% above average) on 1 May 2026, and consistent with the routine summer-draw, autumn-build pattern the EIA’s weekly series has shown for 20 years. The SPR, reported separately, sat at 284.96 million barrels as of 18 September 2026, its lowest level since 1982, after a 172-million-barrel emergency release in March and roughly 128 million barrels in cumulative 2026 drawdowns.

The durable part of this page isn’t any single week’s barrel count — it’s the method: check the commercial figure against its own five-year average rather than last year’s raw number, keep the SPR line separate from commercial stocks, and pull both from EIA’s Wednesday release rather than a cached headline. Do that, and this page stays useful long after these particular figures have rolled over.

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