The Energy Information Administration reported on Wednesday morning that US commercial crude inventories, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, rose 4.4 million barrels in the week to 14 August. The calendar carried a 0.2 million barrel consensus. Stocks now sit at 428.8 million barrels, level with the five-year average, and this was the second consecutive outsized build after the previous week’s 17.4 million barrel surge. By the textbook that should have pressured prices. WTI spot instead finished the survey week at $83.99, up $4.22 in seven days.

Why did the build not bite? Composition. Refineries ran at 97.2% of operable capacity, taking in 17.4 million barrels a day, 215,000 more than the week before. Crude piling up at tank farms while refiners run flat out is a plumbing problem rather than a demand one. Imports fell 746,000 barrels a day, so domestic supply arrived faster than it could be moved. The usual policy shock absorber has also shrunk: the SPR holds 293.4 million barrels against 403.4 million a year ago.

So where is it actually tight? Distillate. Stocks fell 1.5 million barrels to 105.6 million, roughly 13% below the five-year average, and that happened with refineries at maximum runs. Gasoline built 0.7 million to 209.4 million and remains 5% under its own five-year average. New York Harbor heating oil went out at $4.172 a gallon, 39.7 cents higher on the week and close to double the year-ago price. Retail diesel reached $5.454, $1.741 above last August.

Does any of this reach equities? Through the consumer and the Fed rather than through energy names. Retail regular gasoline hit $4.049 a gallon on 17 August, 92 cents higher than a year earlier. Diesel prices its way into freight, and freight prices its way into the goods inflation the FOMC spent its July meeting arguing about, at a meeting where three members dissented in favour of a hike. Total products supplied averaged 20.5 million barrels a day over four weeks, down 2.9% year on year, so demand is bending under those prices even as the barrels accumulate.

The tape looked elsewhere. The S&P 500 added 16.22 points, or 0.2%, to 7,707.98, the Dow 119.65 to 53,463.05 and the Nasdaq 41.38 to 26,331.09. The session belonged to the Treasury plan to more than double long-dated buybacks and to the July minutes. The 10-year eased roughly six basis points to about 4.65% from near 4.75%.

Barrels in the wrong form, in the wrong place, make for a report that gets filed and forgotten until the diesel invoice lands.

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