According to the most recent Weekly Ethanol Plant Production report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. ethanol production reached 1.049 million barrels per day for the week ending January 6th 2017. Correspondingly, weekly ending stocks of fuel ethanol are at 20.009 million barrels as published by EIA’s Weekly Supply Estimates report. Figure 1 illustrates weekly U.S. plant production of fuel ethanol (thousand barrels per day) and weekly U.S. ending stocks of fuel ethanol (thousand barrels) from January 2013 to January 6, 2016.
The most recent lowest production was recorded approximately three months ago during the week ending October 07, 2016 at 0.962 million barrels per day. Then the production soared up to the historical record of 1.049 million barrels per day during the week ending January 06, 2017. Average production in November 2016 was 1.011 million barrels per day and average production in December 2016 was 1.034 million barrels per day. Ethanol production has been above one million barrels per day in the last eleven consecutive weeks ending January 06, 2017.
Meanwhile, weekly ending stocks have rebounded back to 20.009 million barrels as shown in Figure 1. This is an increase of 7 percent from the week ending December 30, 2016. This indicates that the ethanol usage has decreased in recent weeks.
The most recent EIA data shows that gasoline supplied to the U.S. market consisted of an average 9.52 percent ethanol for the week ended on January 06, 2017. As seen in Figure 2, this is a decline from the average 10 percent seen in December 2016. The weekly average ethanol blend rate has been 9.69 percent of ethanol in gasoline in 2016. The weekly average blend rate was 9.60 percent in 2015 and 9.68 in 2014.