By Dan Molinski
Daily production of ethanol in the U.S. fell last week to its lowest level since early 2021 as a brief but bitter blast of cold weather likely forced production facilities to shut down or reduce activity.
In its latest weekly report released Thursday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said daily ethanol production averaged 844,000 barrels a day for the week ended Dec. 30. That is down from 963,000 barrels a day reported for the previous week.
The last time daily production was that low was nearly two years ago, on the week of Feb. 19, 2021, when the EIA projected 658,000 barrels a day. That 2021 week's low ethanol production numbers were also because of a blast of cold air, and snow, that caused massive power outages in Texas and other states.
U.S. refinery activity utilization last week was just 79.6% of capacity, the EIA said, a massive 12.4 percentage-point drop from the previous week's 92.0%, and the lowest since February 2021 when refinery activity fell to just 56%.
Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones this week had forecast production much higher, between 943,000 and 1.02 million barrels a day.
Despite the drop in production, ethanol inventories for the week fell to 24.44 million barrels from 24.64 million barrels the previous week. Analysts had forecast an increase to between 24.69 million and 25.60 million barrels.
Most-active corn futures on the CBOT were down 0.3%.
Write to Dan Molinski at dan.molinski@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-05-23 1218ET
