Again, low utilization rates occurred across all PADDs http://www.oil-gasoline.com/default.asp?id=125
so low rates can't be attributed to outages or maintenance.
Gasoline demand and utilization rates in 1997:
Refinery utilization hits record
Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City),
Aug 28, 1997 by Stephen Voss Bloomberg News
"NEW YORK -- U.S. refinery utilization, the percentage of refining capacity in operation, rose last week to the highest rate ever recorded by the American Petroleum Institute.
Utilization rose to 99.4 percent, the 78-year-old API said Tuesday in a weekly bulletin released after oil futures markets closed, showing that refiners were still busy churning out gasoline to meet high demand toward the end of the summer driving season.
The restart of Tosco's Bayway refinery in New Jersey, the largest on the U.S. East Coast, along with refinery restarts in Texas, boosted overall refinery utilization. Bayway was running at reduced output for about three weeks. "There was a big jump" in refinery operations, said Tom Bentz, energy services director at High Yield Energy Analytics in New York. "Bayway came back up last week and that's in part why runs are up in these lofty levels." Refiners processed 15.502 million barrels a day of crude and other petroleum feedstocks last week. That's close to 15.601 million bbl/day, which is the API's estimate of the maximum amount that U.S. refineries can process. That maximum rate incorporates the likelihood that refineries usually undergo maintenance at some point in the year, so utilization rates could theoretically exceed 100 percent for a limited period, said an API statistician in Washington. The API divides the United States into five regions and last week three of those, the West Coast, Midwest and northern Plains, operated at 100 percent capacity. The preceding week's utilization rate was revised to 98.4 percent from 97.5 percent. The API was founded in 1919."
