US EIA Refinery Utilization Falls 0.2% for Week of Sept 4

The reversal matters less for its size than for what it signals about the run-rate trajectory heading into maintenance season, when utilization typically softens. The prior week's gain now reads as a blip rather than a trend. What's worth watching is whether this modest pullback extends or proves as transient as the increase before it, since sustained softer runs would feed through to product balances rather than crude demand alone.