It is almost a tradition that I use the first chart of the morning paper to showcase the best chart from a late-night oil study from the day prior.

This time is no different as I spent most of yesterday trying to challenge or test the very weak implied demand for Gasoline in the weekly report from the EIA. The demand was down more than 10% in the EIA report even adjusted for seasonality, which caused oil markets to sell off rapidly while all the recession chatter suddenly started again.

The EIA data is the same as it used to be, but interestingly there is a large and growing divergence between the transportation fuel demand assessment and actual road, port and air congestion numbers updated daily.
How can the demand for gasoline be down 12-13% if there is still the same amount of cars on the street? It’s not like we have all bought an EV overnight (Full story: Oil Watch – The EIA plot thickens)

Chart 1: How can gasoline demand be down 12-13% when congestion is normal?