By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Hays Post
The weekly Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes dropped by another ten rigs, seven oil and three gas, to a low of 605 rigs nationwide. That's the lowest tally since January of 2022. Texas and Alaska each dropped by five rigs last week. Utah was down one while New Mexico was up one rig. The count in Louisiana rose by two rigs.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil & Gas Service rose by one to 13 active rigs east of Wichita, and was unchanged in western Kansas at 18 rigs. The tally is down eight percent from a year ago. Drilling was underway Friday on a lease in Barton County and another in Stafford County.
Regulators in Kansas put their okay on 35 new drilling permits last week, with 26 in eastern Kansas and nine west of Wichita. That's 318 new drilling locations so far this year, compared to 442 by this time last year.
Independent Oil & Gas Service reports 28 newly completed wells in Kansas. That's 406 so far this year, compared to 638 a year ago. Nine of the new wells are east of Wichita and 19 are in western Kansas, including one in Russell County and one in Stafford County.
The Kansas Geological Society recognized and named seven new oil fields in Kansas. With the Wiese and KMM-West fields, Murfin Drilling scores two more wildcat strikes in Cheyenne County, continuing a long winning streak in northwestern Kansas. That makes eleven new fields in Kansas so far this year.
The government reports U.S. crude oil inventories rose by more than seven million barrels to just under 461 million as of April 26. Commercial stockpiles are up 2.6 million barrels from a year ago. The Energy Information Administration says crude stockpiles are about three percent below the five-year average for this time of year. The government added another 600,000 barrels to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the third increase in three weeks.
Domestic crude production held steady last week at 13,100,000 barrels a day, to remain within a few hundred-thousand barrels of the all-time record high. The Energy Information Administration says output is up 800,000 barrels per day from a year ago, and total production so far this year is up more than seven percent from the same time last year.
Crude imports outpace exports by nearly 3,000 barrels a day. But the government reports product exports continue to make the U.S. a net petroleum exporter.
U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.8 million barrels per day last week, up 274,000 barrels per day from the previous week. The four week average (6.5Mbpd) is up 3.6% over the same four-weeks a year ago.
Crude exports averaged more than 3.9 million barrels a day, down more than a thousand barrels a day from a week earlier.
Product exports reached 6.4 million barrels, up half-a-million barrels, while total product imports were up 3,000 barrels to nearly 2.3 million barrels a day.
Oil-by-rail traffic in April was up nearly 14% over a year ago, amid a slight increase in total rail traffic. The Association of American Railroads reports petroleum and petroleum product shipments in April rose by 4,967 tanker carloads, or 13.8% compared to April of last year. AAR says weekly traffic was down from last week but up from a year ago.