US gasoline demand is still holding up...

The global outbreak of COVID-19 is increasingly affecting the US. As the world’s largest oil consumer, a key question for the oil market is how US liquids demand will be affected by the COVID-19 crisis. In the Macro Oils short-term outlook March 2020, we estimate US demand falls by 250,000 b/d in Q1 2020 year-on-year and rises slightly in Q2 2020. With containment measures rising in the US, will we need to adjust our view downward? We are engaged in a review of US liquids demand and have turned to our new sister company, Genscape, to examining near term data for US gasoline demand. Using Genscape Supply Side data, we looked at daily rack activity (or delivery from secondary terminals to retail stations) across the US. Some effect was shown in Padd 5 US west coast where the effect from containment was earliest. Interestingly, no significant downturn is yet observed in the other large markets of the US.