Oklahoma’s Cushing Hub, the holding area for large quantities of crude oil and the spot where West Texas Intermediate prices are determined, has only managed to maintain a slight improvement in its total of stored oil over the past month. And if reports are correct, things at the northern Oklahoma hub could get dicey in the coming month because of an approaching season in Canada.
The latest Cushing inventory report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed the Hub held 22,428 million barrels of crude oil as of the week ending August 21. It represents a gain of only about 1.2 million barrels more than the 21,252 million barrels recorded at the end of the week of August 14, but also slightly less than the 22,566 million barrels held at the northern Oklahoma site the week ending August 7.
Cushing’s total inventory dropped to 18,599 million barrels of crude oil the week ending July 24, 2026.
The Cushing total compared to the EIA’s national report that showed an increase of 100,000 barrels during the week ending August 31. OilPrice.com reported the increase brings commercial stockpiles to 428.9 million barrels, according to government data, which are now 1% above the five-year average for this time of year.
The EIA’s data release follows API’s figures that were released a day earlier, which reported that crude oil inventories had risen by 4.2 million barrels in the period.
OilPrice.com also reported another coming event that might affect the Cushing Hub even more and that is the coming maintenance in Canada of its tar sands oil facilities. Tar sands oil is pumped to the U.S. and some is stored temporarily in the Oklahoma storage site until it is moved to U.S. refineries in the Gulf region.
Refineries have been running “round the clock” to make up for fuel supplies lost when the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran, resulting in a chokehold on the movement of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. But it’s believed that in the coming month, Canadian crude oil production could drop by 300,000 barrels a day as Canada’s oil sands maintenance season gets underway.
As Bloomberg and Rystad Energy reported, the seasonal disruption is usually offset with crude held in storage, but crude in storage, especially at the Cushing Hub, is also much lower than usual and has reached its lowest inventory in a year. Typically, Canadian oil producers ship about 4 million barrels a day of the heavy crude to U.S. refiners, but sometime in September, the amount should be lower.
According to the Bloomberg report, all major oil sands operators will be cutting production for maintenance, and pipeline operators have stopped rationing space on their pipes in evidence they expect lower demand in September.
