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USA Crude Oil Inventories Rise 1.4MM Barrels WoW

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 1.4 million barrels from the week ending February 28 to the week ending March 7, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. That report was released on March 12 and included data for […]

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 1.4 million barrels from the week ending February 28 to the week ending March 7, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report.

That report was released on March 12 and included data for the week ending March 7. The report showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 435.2 million barrels on March 7, 433.8 million barrels on February 28, and 447.0 million barrels on March 8, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 395.6 million barrels on March 7, 395.3 million barrels on February 28, and 361.6 million barrels on March 8, 2024, the report outlined.

Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.594 billion barrels on March 7, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks were down 5.7 million barrels week on week and up 15.2 million barrels year on year, the report revealed.

“At 435.2 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about five percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in the report.

“Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 5.7 million barrels from last week and are one percent above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories both decreased last week,” it added.

“Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 1.6 million barrels last week and are about five percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 3.4 million barrels from last week and are 10 percent below the five year average for this time of year,” it continued.

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.7 million barrels per day during the week ending March 7, 2025, according to the report, which noted that this was 321,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average.

“Refineries operated at 86.5 percent of their operable capacity last week,” the EIA said in the report.

“Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.6 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production decreased last week, averaging 4.5 million barrels per day,” it added.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 5.5 million barrels per day last week, the EIA stated in the report. It highlighted that this was a decrease of 343,000 barrels per day from the previous week.

“Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 5.8 million barrels per day, 10.6 percent less than the same four-week period last year,” the EIA said in its report.

“Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 578,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 249,000 barrels per day,” it added.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 20.7 million barrels a day, up by 3.9 percent from the same period last year, the EIA stated in its latest weekly petroleum status report.

“Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.7 million barrels a day, up by 0.1 percent from the same period last year,” the EIA said.

“Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 4.1 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 9.5 percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 1.5 percent compared with the same four-week period last year,” it added.

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team late Monday, Macquarie strategists revealed that they were forecasting that U.S. crude inventories would be up 5.7 million barrels for the week ending March 7.

“This compares to our early look for the week which anticipated a 7.9 million barrel build, and a 3.6 million barrel build realized for the week ending February 28,” the strategists said in the report.

“Across both crude and products, our balances are modestly tighter than anticipated in our early view,” they added.

In its previous weekly petroleum status report, which was released on March 5 and included data for the week ending February 28, the EIA highlighted that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, increased by 3.6 million barrels from the week ending February 21 to the week ending February 28.

The EIA’s next weekly petroleum status report is scheduled to be released on March 19. It will include data for the week ending March 14.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

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SUSE expands AI tools to control workloads, LLM usage

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D-Wave uses quantum to solve real-world problem

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IRA credits and energy demand continue to drive renewables investments

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EPA aims to roll back power sector regulations in broad deregulatory push

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Renewables cannot scale without oil and gas – Hitachi Energy

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Tidal and the UK supply chain ‘conundrum’

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Aberdeen’s Peterson Energy Logistics strikes support deal with Spirit Energy

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USA Crude Oil Inventories Rise 1.4MM Barrels WoW

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VergeIO enhances VergeFabric network virtualization offering

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Podcast: On the Frontier of Modular Edge AI Data Centers with Flexnode’s Andrew Lindsey

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Last Energy to Deploy 30 Microreactors in Texas for Data Centers

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Data Center Jobs: Engineering and Technician Jobs Available in Major Markets

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Amid Shifting Regional Data Center Policies, Iron Mountain and DC Blox Both Expand in Virginia’s Henrico County

The dynamic landscape of data center developments in Maryland and Virginia exemplify the intricate balance between fostering technological growth and addressing community and environmental concerns. Data center developers in this region find themselves both in the crosshairs of groups worried about the environment and other groups looking to drive economic growth. In some cases, the groups are different components of the same organizations, such as local governments. For data center development, meeting the needs of these competing interests often means walking a none-too-stable tightrope. Rapid Government Action Encourages Growth In May 2024, Maryland demonstrated its commitment to attracting data center investments by enacting the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act. This legislation provides a clear framework for the use of emergency backup power generation, addressing previous regulatory challenges that a few months earlier had hindered projects like Aligned Data Centers’ proposed 264-megawatt campus in Frederick County, causing Aligned to pull out of the project. However, just days after the Act was signed by the governor, Aligned reiterated its plans to move forward with development in Maryland.  With the Quantum Loop and the related data center development making Frederick County a focal point for a balanced approach, the industry is paying careful attention to the pace of development and the relations between developers, communities and the government. In September of 2024, Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater revealed draft legislation that would potentially restrict where in the county data centers could be built. The legislation was based on information found in the Frederick County Data Centers Workgroup’s final report. Those bills would update existing regulations and create a floating zone for Critical Digital Infrastructure and place specific requirements on siting data centers. Statewide, a cautious approach to environmental and community impacts statewide has been deemed important. In January 2025, legislators introduced SB116,  a bill

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New Reports Show How AI, Power, and Investment Trends Are Reshaping the Data Center Landscape

Today we provide a comprehensive roundup of the latest industry analyst reports from CBRE, PwC, and Synergy Research, offering a data-driven perspective on the state of the North American data center market.  To wit, CBRE’s latest findings highlight record-breaking growth in supply, soaring colocation pricing, and mounting power constraints shaping site selection. For its part, PwC’s analysis underscores the sector’s broader economic impact, quantifying its trillion-dollar contribution to GDP, rapid job growth, and surging tax revenues.  Meanwhile, the latest industry analysis from Synergy Research details the acceleration of cloud spending, AI’s role in fueling infrastructure demand, and an unprecedented surge in data center mergers and acquisitions.  Together, these reports paint a picture of an industry at an inflection point—balancing explosive expansion with evolving challenges in power availability, cost pressures, and infrastructure investment. Let’s examine them. CBRE: Surging Demand Fuels Record Data Center Expansion CBRE says the North American data center sector is scaling at an unprecedented pace, driven by unrelenting demand from artificial intelligence (AI), hyperscale, and cloud service providers. The latest North America Data Center Trends H2 2024 report from CBRE reveals that total supply across primary markets surged by 34% year-over-year to 6,922.6 megawatts (MW), outpacing the 26% growth recorded in 2023. This accelerating expansion has triggered record-breaking construction activity and intensified competition for available capacity. Market Momentum: Scaling Amid Power Constraints According to CBRE, data center construction activity reached historic levels, with 6,350 MW under development at the close of 2024—more than doubling the 3,077.8 MW recorded a year prior. Yet, the report finds the surge in development is being met with significant hurdles, including power constraints and supply chain challenges affecting critical electrical infrastructure. As a result, the vacancy rate across primary markets has plummeted to an all-time low of 1.9%, with only a handful of sites

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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