# The EIA Petroleum Status Report, explained > The Weekly Petroleum Status Report is the US Energy Information Administration's weekly accounting of the petroleum system, released Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern and covering the week ended the prior Friday. For propane it carries the four series that matter: stocks, production, imports and exports, and product supplied, EIA's proxy for demand. _Updated Jul 19, 2026._ Every year-round number on The Fill Line traces back to one document: the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, the US Energy Information Administration's weekly accounting of the country's petroleum system. Traders shorten it to the WPSR or just the weekly. It covers crude oil and every major product, but a handful of its tables are the propane market's weekly scoreboard, and reading them takes about five minutes once you know where to look. ## What it is and when it lands EIA publishes the WPSR every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, covering the week that ended the prior Friday. When a federal holiday falls early in the week the release slips a day, usually to Thursday at noon. The data behind it comes from EIA's weekly surveys of refineries, gas plants, pipelines, bulk terminals and importers, so the report describes the primary supply system, the bulk layer of the market, not the dealer plants or the tank behind the house. The weekly figures are estimates, and EIA later trues them up in its monthly Petroleum Supply Monthly, so a week's number can be revised months after the fact. The direction of the weekly moves is the signal; the third decimal is not. ## The propane tables that matter For propane the report boils down to two things: the stocks number and the supply balance behind it. Stocks are the headline. The WPSR reports propane and propylene inventories in primary storage, for the country and by PADD district, with the Rockies and West Coast combined into a single PADD 4-5 figure. The two products are counted together because they share storage and pipelines. This is the number the market reacts to on Wednesday morning, and it is the number this site charts against its five-year band. [Chart: US propane inventories](https://fill-line.com/stocks/us) ([data](https://fill-line.com/stocks/us.md) — chart image: https://fill-line.com/charts/stocks/us/chart.png) The chart above is that series, live. A fresh release moves the last point on this line. The supply balance explains why stocks moved. Four series do the work. Production is what gas plants and refineries made that week. Imports and exports are what crossed the border in each direction, and for US propane the export line is by far the larger of the two. Product supplied is the fourth, and it needs a sentence of translation: it measures the volume that left the primary supply chain for the market that week, which is why EIA treats it as implied demand. It is measured upstream of any actual sale, but it is the closest weekly read on consumption the public data offers. ## How to read a fresh release Start with the stock change: did propane inventories build or draw, and by how much. Then place the new level against what is normal for the date, since propane stocks are supposed to swing across the seasons; a build is routine in July and a draw is routine in January. This site does that placement automatically, comparing each week to the five-year median for the same calendar week. Then read the balance to see what drove the change. A draw can come from cold weather showing up in product supplied, or from a hot export week, or from soft production, and those are different stories. The arithmetic is simple: production plus imports, minus exports and product supplied, is roughly the week's stock change. When a draw shows up with mild weather, the export line is usually the answer. [Table: US propane production](https://fill-line.com/supply/production) ([data](https://fill-line.com/supply/production.md)) The table above is the live production series with its week-over-week and vs-normal readings, the same treatment every series on this page gets. ## Where each series lives on this site Each WPSR propane series has a page here that updates when the report lands. The inventories pages carry stocks for the US and each district against the five-year band. The supply pages carry production, imports, exports and demand, each with the US line and its regional composition. Together they are the whole propane portion of the report, restated with history and context attached. ## What the WPSR does not tell you Two limits are worth stating plainly. First, there are no propane prices in it. Residential and wholesale prices come from a separate EIA survey that runs only during heating season, October through March, which is its own guide. Second, the stocks figure covers primary storage only, so the retail market can tighten on the ground during a cold snap before the national number registers it. The report describes the wholesale system's cushion, not any one county's delivery week. The Fill Line reports the WPSR's propane figures as EIA publishes them, dated to the week they cover. It describes what moved and what drove it; it does not forecast next week's number and it never advises a reader on when to buy, lock or fill. The Fill Line is a free weekly read of the public propane numbers. Stocks, the Mont Belvieu spot and the weekly supply balance update year round; the state price survey resumes in October. One email a week on what moved. ## Related data + guides - [US propane inventories](https://fill-line.com/stocks/us) - [US propane production](https://fill-line.com/supply/production) - [US propane exports](https://fill-line.com/supply/exports) - [US propane demand](https://fill-line.com/supply/demand) - [Understanding EIA propane data](https://fill-line.com/guides/understanding-eia-propane-data) - [Glossary](https://fill-line.com/glossary) ## Common questions ### When does the EIA Petroleum Status Report come out? Every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, covering the week that ended the prior Friday. When a federal holiday falls early in the week the release slips, usually to Thursday. This site's stocks and supply pages update once the new week's data lands. ### Does the WPSR include propane prices? No. The report carries volumes: stocks, production, imports, exports and product supplied. Residential and wholesale propane prices come from EIA's separate heating-season survey, which runs October through March and publishes on a different schedule. ### What is product supplied in the WPSR? EIA's proxy for demand. It measures the volume that left the primary supply chain of refineries, gas plants, pipelines and bulk terminals for the market that week. EIA calls it implied demand because it is measured upstream of the final sale. --- Canonical URL: https://fill-line.com/guides/the-eia-petroleum-status-report