MARKETWIRE ALERTS

MARKETWIRE ALERTS 

MarketWire Afternoon News for October 14^th

Updated at 5:00 PM ET 

HEADLINES:

— Chevron’s El Segundo Refinery Reports Emergency Flaring

— TCEQ Offers Up to $5K Grants for Alternative Fuel Vehicles

— EIA: China Demand for U.S. Ethane Could Slow Beyond 2026

— U.S. Economic Data Delayed This Week Amid Shutdown

— ANALYSIS: IEA Oil Surplus Call Ties to OPEC+ Unwinding

NEWS:

Chevron’s El Segundo Refinery Reports Emergency Flaring

Chevron reported on Tuesday (10/14)  an emergency flaring event at its 269,000 bpd El Segundo, California, refinery that began at 12:00 a.m. PT, according to a filing with the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
The cause of the flare was listed as emergency flaring, with no estimated stop time available as of Tuesday afternoon. Chevron has reported multiple flaring incidents at El Segundo following a massive explosion affecting the Isomax 7 unit on October 2.
The filing indicated that volatile organic compound emissions may exceed 100 lb for the entire event, with daily cumulative vent gas flow expected to surpass 100,000 scf.
The El Segundo refinery is a key supplier of transportation fuels for Southern California markets, including Los Angeles and San Diego.

TCEQ Offers Up to $5K Grants for Alternative Fuel Vehicles

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on Tuesday (10/14) launched a new funding cycle for a grant program aimed at encouraging Texans to purchase or lease new light-duty alternative fuel vehicles.

The grants — on a first-come, first-served basis – offer $5,000 for new compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas vehicles. There will also be $2,500 for electric drive cars — featuring both plug-in and plug-in hybrid models — and hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles.

The TCEQ said it has capped the total number of grants at 1,000 for CNG/LPG vehicles and 2,000 for electric/hydrogen vehicles.

The incentives seek to reduce tailpipe emissions under the Light-Duty Motor Vehicle Purchase, or Lease Incentive Program, and are offered to individuals, corporations and government entities.

The program is structured to comply with environmental mandates while being strategically aligned with Texas’ vast natural gas and propane industries.

To qualify, vehicles must be new, light-duty (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating lbs.), and be registered and operated in Texas for at least one year.

Applications are accepted only after the vehicle has been purchased or leased on or after September 1, 2025, and taken into possession. The application window is open until March 6, 2026, or until all funds are depleted.

EIA: China Demand for U.S. Ethane Could Slow Beyond 2026

China’s demand for U.S. ethane could slow beyond 2026 after the double-digit growth forecast for exports of the ethylene feedstock for this year and next, the Energy Information Administration said Tuesday (10/14). 

China has historically been the largest destination for U.S. ethane, accounting for 47% of exports in 2024, but this could change after 2026 due to softer demand and a glut in East Asian supply, the EIA stated. 

“Developers in the United States are expanding ethane export capacity to meet increasing global demand for ethane as a petrochemical feedstock, particularly in China,” the EIA said rt. “However, demand growth in China is expected to slow in 2026 amid tightening product margins and oversupply of ethylene derivatives in East Asia.”

The EIA noted that two Chinese ethylene cracker projects have been delayed and may take naphtha as feedstock instead of ethane. This follows a notice issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security in May that required U.S. ethane exporters to obtain a special license to export ethane to China. The requirement ended on July 2.

The EIA also noted that while naphtha can be sourced around the world, “the United States is the only country capable of exporting waterborne ethane.”

In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for October, the agency forecast that U.S. ethane net exports will grow 14% in 2025, followed by a 16% rise in 2026.

In Tuesday’s report, it said major expansions in U.S. energy export infrastructure are expected to drive that growth.

Those expansions include Energy Transfer’s Nederland and Marcus Hook export terminals and Enterprise’s Neches River terminals, which are expected to collectively add substantial bpd of new capacity through early 2026, it said.

Energy Transfer commissioned its Nederland facility in Texas in the second quarter of this year with capacity to export 250,000 pd of either ethane or propane. It will also expand its Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, terminal by 20,000 bpd by end-2025.

In July, Enterprise commissioned the Neches River ethane terminal in Texas, which has a capacity of 120,000 bpd.  The second phase of the Neches River terminal is expected to come online in early 2026, adding 180,000 bpd of capacity.

The addition of the Nederland flexport facility and first phase of the Neches River terminal increased U.S. ethane export capacity 16%, the EIA noted, while the second phase of Neches River terminal will expand it a further 21%.

EIA Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update Delayed Till Wednesday

The Energy Information Administration’s weekly Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update will be delayed by a day due to Monday’s federal holiday (10/13).

The report will now be released tomorrow, Wednesday (10/15), at 10:00 a.m. ET, according to the agency.

U.S. Economic Data Delayed This Week Amid Shutdown

U.S. economic data scheduled for this week will be rescheduled or not be publish as the federal government shutdown entered its fourteenth day.

Consumer Price Index data for September from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, originally scheduled for release Wednesday (10/15), has been postponed to Friday October 24.

BLS announced on its website that September CPI data will be the only publication released while the shutdown is ongoing, saying “No other releases will be rescheduled or produced until the resumption of regular government services”.

U.S. retail sales data for September from the U.S. Census Bureau, and U.S. industrial production data from the Federal Reserve, originally scheduled for Thursday (10/16) and Friday release, respectively, will also not be published this week.

The federal government went into shutdown after the U.S. Congress failed to pass appropriations bills or a continuing resolution to fund government agencies before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1.

ANALYSIS: IEA Oil Surplus Call Ties to OPEC+ Unwinding

The International Energy Agency’s call for an even larger oil surplus by the end of the year versus its September forecast is directly tied to producer alliance OPEC+’s unwinding of output cuts.

In its October oil market report published Tuesday (10/14), the IEA also implied a heavily oversupplied market throughout 2026.

The Paris-based energy market watchdog lowered demand growth expectations for 2025 slightly by 30,000 bpd to 710,000 bpd. The bulk of the upward revision to its global oil inventory forecast was, however, tied to OPEC+ activity.

Specifically, the revisions related to OPEC+’s rapid and ongoing unwinding of output cuts that coincided with a surge in crude oil exports from the Middle East last month.

IEA now expects global oil supply to grow by 3 million bpd in 2025, up from 2.7 million bpd in last month’s report.

The agency estimated global production in September to have been 5.6 million bpd higher year-on-year, with OPEC+ accounting for 3.1 million bpd of the sizable increase.

Global oil supply in September reached a record 108 million bpd, up 760,000 bpd as production from OPEC+ — a 22-nation alliance of OPEC and partners outside its core membership of 12 — surged by 1 million bpd from August, according to the report.

OPEC’s own monthly report published on Monday, in contrast, estimated the group and its partners ramped up production by 630,000 bpd month-on-month in September.

In combination with healthy non-OPEC production growth, the supply push coinciding with a seasonal global refining lull, usually seen around October, has led to rapidly swelling volumes of oil on water, both in transit and in floating storage, as well as growing on-land inventories.

In fact, IEA reported that global observed oil inventories in August expanded for the seventh consecutive month to a four-year high of 7.909 billion bbl.

While floating storage was estimated 8 million bbl lower than in July, preliminary data for September pointed to surging volumes of oil on water of 102 million bbl.

The surplus in which the market has found itself since the beginning of the year may have been partially obfuscated by the uneven geographical distribution of inventory builds.

This was because those builds were concentrated in less data transparent markets like China, while US oil and product inventories, sans gas liquids, remained less affected by the 1.9 million bpd surplus.

A 300,000-bpd upward revision to 2026 supply growth, now estimated at 2.4 million bpd, and an unchanged demand growth figure implied an even larger surplus next year than previously estimated, now pegged at close to 4 million bpd.