rjs's blog

OPEC oil output at a 6 month low; global oil output at a 12 month high

We’re going to start by reviewing OPEC's December Oil Market Report (covering November OPEC & global oil data), which was released on Wednesday of last week, and which is now available as a free download.  The first table from this report that we'll look at is from page 64 of that OPEC pdf, and it shows oil production in thousands of barrels per day for each of the current OPEC members over the recent years, quarters and months, as the column headings indicate. 

The Great US Natural Gas Exports Myth

I've previously pointed out that our natural gas supplies are a lot tighter than they appear to be, and there's no way that additional supplies can be developed at the prices that are being promised for these exports.  What I'm going to do today is show you the natural gas data that I'm looking at, so you can see how I've come to that conclusion.

Despite OPEC Cuts, Global Glut Grows A Million Barrels a Day

Last week saw the release of the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report for February (pdf), which covers global oil data for January.  It's the production data in that report, not the IEA estimates that we looked at last week, that will determine, by OPEC's own standards, whether their members have complied with the production cuts they have agreed to or not.

New Record Highs for US Oil Exports, for Gasoline Inventories, and for Oil Inventories

This week's oil data for the week ending February 10th from the US Energy Information Administration showed that our imports of crude oil fell back from last week's 4 year high but still remained elevated, while our refining of that oil fell for the 5th week in a row to the second lowest rate in a year, and as a result there was another large surplus of crude that was added to our oil supplies, which were thus boosted to an all time high.

US gasoline production at record levels, but supplies are still dropping on record exports

Even with a record high in our gasoline production, the EIA reported that our gasoline supplies fell by 1,593,000 barrels to 227,143,000 barrels as of December 23rd. While our gasoline imports fell by 13,000 barrels per day to 434,000 barrels per day, our gasoline exports rose by 354,000 barrels per day to a record high of 1,149,000 barrels per day,

Oil Production Cuts Could Result in 600,000 Barrel Per Day Global Deficit in First Half of 2017

We finally have some details on the secondary agreement to cut oil production that came out of that meeting of Russia and other non-OPEC oil producers last Saturday. That agreement is projected to reduce production of the 11 signatories by 558,000 barrels a day, on top of the 1.2 million barrels a day in cuts already agreed to by OPEC, thus amounting to a total reduction of about 1.8% of global oil supply. 

OPEC agrees to cut production back to March levels, oil prices spike 14%

At their meeting in Vienna on Wednesday, the member nations of OPEC agreed to cut their oil production by 4.5% for a period to run 6 months, effective January 1st.  The amount of oil output each member is expected to forgo is generally based on their October production, although for some countries, such as Iran, the baseline for the output cut has been adjusted for special factors.   Libya and Nigeria, whose recent production has been disrupted by civil conflict, will be exempt from the cuts.

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