By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
The government says your electric bill will go up slightly compared to last summer. The Energy Information Administration forecasts an average monthly bill, nationwide, of $178, compared to $173 a month last summer. The report suggests that consumption will go down this summer, driven by cooler weather. But EIA says that will only partially offset rising residential electric rates expected in most areas of the US.
July crude expired Friday a few pennies below $75 a barrel. The August NYMEX contract was below $74 at the close of trading Friday. Crude prices were not spiking as many expected Monday. NYMEX crude was a few cents higher, still trading a few cents below $74 a barrel by lunchtime Monday. London Brent was over $77 by midday Monday.
US Rig Counts drop for the eighth week in a row. Baker Hughes reports 554 active rigs across the country. The total in Texas is down four rigs, Oklahoma is down two and North Dakota is down one. New Mexico and Wyoming each gained two rigs. Colorado and Louisiana each added one rig.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service is down one rig or eight percent from a week ago, down 45% from a month ago, and down 61% from a year ago. There are two active drilling rigs in the eastern half of the state, and nine in Western Kansas, which is down one rig from a week ago.
The state okayed nine new drilling locations in Kansas. Five of them are east of Wichita, and four are in Western Kansas. Drilling permits this year trail last year by 133 permits.
The 563 well-completions reported this year trail last year by just six wells. Out of 17 new completions last week in Kansas, seven are west of Wichita, including one in Ellis County and another in Haskell County.
US crude stockpiles dropped by the biggest amount in nearly a year. The Energy Information Administration reports commercial inventories of just under 421 million barrels, down nearly 12 million barrels from a week earlier. The last inventory decline this large was in the week through June 28, 2024.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve took delivery on 200,000 barrels last week, or 31.4 million barrels in the last year. The total is now over 402 million barrels.
Crude production in the United States was nearly unchanged, dropping by eight barrels per day in Alaska, but increasing eleven barrels a day in the rest of the country, for a net increase of three barrels a day compared to a week earlier. Total output now averages 13,431,000 barrels a day.
The Administration will green-light energy development in The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a patch roughly the size of Indiana that's believed to contain 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The government is repealing Biden-era curbs blocking oil drilling across most of the 23-million acre reserve. The state estimates output from the reserve will climb to nearly 140,000 barrels per day by the year 2033, compared to just 16,000 barrels per day now. ConocoPhillips is developing its 600-million-barrel Willow project in the NPR-A, which is expected to produce its first oil in three years.
Total energy production in the US last year outpaced the record set the year before, with total energy production over 103 quadrillion British thermal units...that's up about one percent from 2023. The Energy Information Administration says several individual energy sources set records as well, including crude oil, natural gas, natural gas plant liquids, biofuels, solar and wind.