By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Kansas crude prices head toward the end of the year on a high note. Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson was fetching $65.75 per barrel on Monday. That's up $10 per barrel from the first of the month, and $27 per barrel higher than at the first of the year.
Drilling at several well sites in our area was shut down for the holiday, or for fire protection, and are expected resume after the first of the year. Quite a few drillers reached total depth and shut down prior to the holiday. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports 17 active rigs in eastern Kansas last week, which is unchanged, and 26 active drilling rigs west of Wichita, which is down one.
Regulators in Kansas approved 36 new drilling permits last week. That's 1,182 so far this year. Out of 15 new permits in western Kansas, one was in Barton County and two were in Russell County. There are 21 new permits in eastern Kansas.
In the last weekly completions tally of the year, over twenty percent of the completed oil wells in Kansas were dry holes. The year-to-date total of 959 newly-completed wells included 199 dry holes. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports 27 new completions statewide last week, including one each in Barton and Ellis counties.
The government reported a big dip in U.S. crude-oil inventories. The Energy Information Administration said stockpiles dropped by nearly five million barrels to 423.6 million. EIA said inventories are currently about eight percent below the five-year average for this time of year.
Production and imports were both down for the week. EIA said U.S. output averaged just over 11.5 million barrels per day. That's down about 200,000 barrels per day from a week earlier, but it's up nearly half a million barrels a day from the same week a year ago. U.S. refiners imported an average of 6.2 million barrels per day, down about a quarter million barrels per day. Imports over the past four weeks were 12 percent higher than during the same four-week period last year.
A huge gift from Harold Hamm and his company Continental Resources will help create the Hamm Institute for American Energy at Oklahoma State University. The center will host authors, speakers, energy summits and leadership meetings. It will include a state-of-the-art laboratory featuring wells drilled below the building and eventually will feature an interactive museum. The initial funding will be a gift of $25 million from the Harold Hamm Foundation and $25 million from Continental Resources.
A trade group in Texas reports a continuing boom in oil-patch employment there. Citing government data, the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association reported Texas 185,800 people had jobs in exploration and production, an increase of 2,400 jobs from their revised October numbers, and the seventh consecutive month of job growth for the industry since April. Those job numbers are up 24,800 positions from a year earlier.
A Houston-based oil company and two subsidiaries were indicted last week for that crude-oil spill off the coast of Southern California back in October. Prosecutors say the spill was caused in part by failing to properly act when alarms repeatedly alerted workers to a pipeline rupture. Amplify Energy Corp. and its companies that operate several oil rigs and a pipeline off Long Beach were charged by a federal grand jury with a single misdemeanor count of illegally discharging oil. Investigators believe the pipeline was weakened when a cargo ship’s anchor snagged it, several months before it ultimately ruptured, spilling up to about 25,000 gallons of crude oil in the ocean.
Elections in Libya may not go on as scheduled, but that country's national oil company still hopes to ramp up crude production by an additional 100,000 barrels per day by next summer. That would raise output in the war-torn nation to 1.4 million barrels per day. The country's top energy official said if they cannot pass a national budget they may reach out to private Libyan or foreign companies to develop fields and boost output. The Energy Minister told Bloomberg News they hope to top two million barrels per day within two or three years, but acknowledged they have to form a government first, and there were signs an election scheduled this week might not take place.