Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing Data: From Spot Tape to Pump Price · Head-to-head
EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal vs EIA Refinery Capacity Report
Which oil & gas refining & marketing data: from spot tape to pump price data fits your job: EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal, or EIA Refinery Capacity Report. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal
EIA Refinery Capacity Report
Where the fields line up
2 shared fields — join on these.
| Field | EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal | EIA Refinery Capacity Report |
|---|---|---|
period | Reporting period of the observation - a weekly week-ending date, a month, or a year depending on the series. | Two-digit report year suffix; figures are as of January 1 of that year. |
product | Product code for the series - EPMRR for reformulated regular motor gasoline, EPD2D for No. 2 diesel, and equivalents across crude, jet, propane and residual fuel. | Process unit or product category being measured - about 34 values spanning ALKYLATES, CAT CRACKING: FRESH FEED, DESULFURIZATION, DIESEL FUEL and ASPHALT & ROAD OIL. |
Coverage, side by side
| EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal | EIA Refinery Capacity Report | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | United States broken out by PADD district and sub-district, state and selected cities; trade series keyed to country of origin and destination | All 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and other US possessions, organized by PAD district and state |
| Temporal | Daily spot and futures from 1986; weekly status from the early 1990s; monthly marketing and supply from 1975-1983 forward; annual capacity tables since 1994 (history to 1982) | January 1 snapshots annually from 1994, skipped for 1996 and 1998; shutdown tables back to 1990; storage-capacity history 1982-2010 |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal | EIA Refinery Capacity Report | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) | U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Form EIA-820 |
| Subject lens | The umbrella over American downstream petroleum statistics: prices, refining and processing, stocks, movements, imports/exports, consumption and sales | Annual plant-level census of US refinery capacity as of January 1: distillation, downstream units, production capacity, receipts and fuels consumed |
| Geographic coverage | United States broken out by PADD district and sub-district, state and selected cities; trade series keyed to country of origin and destination | All 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and other US possessions, organized by PAD district and state |
| Temporal coverage | Daily spot and futures from 1986; weekly status from the early 1990s; monthly marketing and supply from 1975-1983 forward; annual capacity tables since 1994 (history to 1982) | January 1 snapshots annually from 1994, skipped for 1996 and 1998; shutdown tables back to 1990; storage-capacity history 1982-2010 |
| Detail level | One row per series-period, each series an area-product-process mnemonic such as EER_EPMRR_PF4_Y05LA_DPG | One row per refinery-product-capacity-measure, about 3,300 rows naming corporation, company, site, state and PAD district |
| Scale | Roughly 53,300 series in the bulk file alone, spanning seven product shelves | 130 respondent sites expanding across 34 process and product categories |
| Best for | Price monitoring, inventory signals, utilization tracking, trade flows, retail benchmarks | Capacity denominators, complexity and conversion profiles, M&A screening, competitive landscape |
What each does better
the EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal
Cadence and depth nobody else matches in one scheme. Daily spot and futures quotes from 1986 sit beside weekly status reports and monthly supply and marketing series - verified May 2026 shows gross input to atmospheric crude distillation at 16,936 thousand barrels per day against 18,027 operable calendar-day capacity, a 94.0 percent run. Crack-spread construction becomes subtraction when refined-product and crude quotes share a clock and an identifier grammar.
Geography that answers regional questions. PADD districts, sub-districts, states and selected cities, with trade flows additionally keyed to country of origin and destination - who ships which barrel into which district, not just totals.
the EIA Refinery Capacity Report
Resolution down to the plant and the unit. About 130 respondent refineries, each expanded across 34 process and product categories into roughly 3,300 rows: atmospheric crude distillation capacity in barrels per calendar day and per stream day, downstream charge capacity for vacuum distillation, coking, catalytic cracking, hydrocracking, reforming and desulfurization, production capacity by product. The portal's monthly utilization series needs exactly these numbers as its denominator - the report is where 18,027 comes from.
Named ownership. Every row attributes capacity to parent corporation and operating company at a named site - Equistar Chemicals LP at Channelview, Texas, holding 22,370 barrels per stream day of alkylate production capacity, or American Refining Group at Bradford, Pennsylvania with 2,050 barrels per day of high-pressure catalytic reforming charge capacity. Consolidation questions resolve at both ends: who owns what, and where it sits relative to crude supply.
Conversion-profile arithmetic. Charge and production capacities side by side show which plants convert heavy sour discounts into product value and which merely top crude - the raw material behind M&A screening and asset valuation work. Since 2024 the survey also counts non-refinery operators of distillation-class units, so the capacity map stays honest about who actually runs stills.
Where they're equivalent
More than their different shapes suggest. Same publisher collecting both under statutory authority, so the definitions carry the weight of the same institution. Both field dictionaries were verified during research. Both score well above the catalog average - the portal at 10/10, the report at 9/10 against 7.81. Both resolve geography through the PAD-district system, making district-level joins between them a straight key match rather than a crosswalk project. Both ship flat, documented tabular structures - one row per series-period on the portal, one row per refinery-product-capacity-measure on the report - rather than PDF narratives with numbers buried in prose. And both cover individual refineries somewhere in their grain: the portal publishes some series at refinery level, the report is nothing but refinery level.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they are different instruments pointed at the same industry.
Accept aggregation: most series stop at national, district or state, and no plant is named.
Take the EIA Refinery Capacity Report if your question names an asset. Which plants can crack heavy crude, who owns the Gulf Coast conversion fleet, how much coking capacity sits in PADD 3, closure risk by site - anything answered by plant-level capability. Accept the tempo: one snapshot a year, as of January 1.
Investors and quants tend toward the first for spread and signal work and the second for denominator and asset screens; data scientists and ML engineers usually want both - the panel to train on, the census to anchor entity features.
Sample both, pick by fit. See EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal · See EIA Refinery Capacity Report
Or take both in one feed
Yes - and together they are worth more than either apart, because they occupy different layers of one stack.
Two alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, the join key: both systems resolve to PAD districts, so district-level aggregation joins cleanly - but plant-level joins require matching the report's site identities to the few refinery-level series the portal publishes, and there is no shared identifier doing it for you. Second, definitions: the portal's operable calendar-day capacity is a national-or-district aggregate, while the report splits calendar-day, stream-day and steam-day capacity conventions per plant - pick your convention before computing any ratio across the pair. Align on period last: the report speaks January 1 vintages, the portal speaks weeks and months, and the nearest period is the honest match. Browse the rest of the shelf at the Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing data hub.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is the EIA Petroleum & Other Liquids Data Portal better than the EIA Refinery Capacity Report?
Better at different jobs. The portal owns motion: spot gasoline at $3.361 a gallon in New York Harbor and US regular at $4.079 for the week of August 17, 2026, utilization at 94.0 percent in May 2026, stocks by product and district every week. The report owns stock: 22,370 barrels per stream day of alkylate capacity at Equistar's Channelview plant - one row per refinery, process unit and product, once a year.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
They overlap on exactly one construct: refining capacity and utilization. The portal carries monthly gross input to atmospheric crude distillation against operable calendar-day capacity; the report is where that capacity lives plant by plant across 34 process and product categories.
Which dataset reaches further back?
The portal, decisively. The report publishes annual January 1 snapshots from 1994, with no editions for 1996 or 1998, plus shutdown tables reaching to 1990.
Which should an analyst modeling Gulf Coast crack spreads sample first?
Start with the portal: PADD 3 spot gasoline and distillate quotes beside national and district utilization give you the spread and the throughput behind it, keyed to one series identifier. Add the Refinery Capacity Report when the model needs per-plant denominators - which Gulf Coast refineries convert heavy crude, and under whose ownership. Both arrive normalized to their documented field dictionaries.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary (seven fields on the portal side, eleven on the report) with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. Or take both in one feed.