WASHINGTON – September was a record-setting month for U.S. refiners. According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), last month refiners “pumped up the volume,” producing more distillate than ever before and producing the “highest levels of gasoline for the month.”

The group’s September 2006 Monthly Statistical Report notes that U.S. stockpiles of crude oil and refined products “stood well above their five-year average for the month, thanks to extraordinary high imports and record domestic refinery production.” Meanwhile, U.S. distillate production averaged a record-high of nearly 4.4 million barrels per day in September, including nearly 2.6 million barrels per day of ultra low sulfur diesel fuel (ULSD), while gasoline output averaged 9.1 million barrels per day, the highest ever for September. Refinery capacity utilization averaged 93 percent, the highest for the month in three years, according to API.

“Refiners have managed to ramp up production of clean diesel to the point where this exacting fuel now accounts for more than one-fifth of all motor fuel produced,” API Manager of Statistical Information and Analysis Ronald J. Planting said in the release.

API notes that September’s crude oil imports were the highest ever, at 10.9 million barrels per day, which contrasts sharply with crude imports in September 2005, “when refinery demand for crude oil was hobbled by the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast.” Meanwhile, strong domestic refinery output of products in the more recent period reversed last September’s then-record product imports, which had helped offset the loss of domestic supply capability. This year, product imports fell in September nearly 18 percent from 2005, although the 3.4 million barrels per day of product imports were roughly in line with year-to-date results.

Domestic refined product deliveries experienced a rare year-to-year increase, “if only because demand in September a year ago was diminished for some products by the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on supplies and prices,” writes API.

September 2006 gasoline deliveries showed an increase of more than 4 percent. Planting estimated that if 2005 deliveries had not been affected by the hurricanes' impact, this year’s September gasoline deliveries would have shown an increase of a little more than 2 percent, which is still “relatively strong growth compared with recent past months, occurring at a time when retail gasoline prices have been falling dramatically.”