By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Roughly one in five of the manned oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico are still evacuated, according to a report Sunday from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. The Bureau says personnel at 137 production platforms remain evacuated. The report also says personnel have not yet returned to two of the 12 moored drilling rigs working in the region. The unmoored, so-called "dynamically positioned" rigs have all returned to their working locations. The government estimates nearly 70% of the oil production and nearly 50% of the gas production in the Gulf remain shut in.
Baker Hughes reported 254 active drilling rigs nationwide. That's a decline of three oil rigs but an increase of three seeking natural gas. The counts in Texas and New Mexico were each down one. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports five active rigs in eastern Kansas, down one from last week, and five west of Wichita, which is also down one.
Operators in the Sunflower State completed seven wells last week, all of them west of Wichita. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports the total so far this year is just 612 completed wells, compared to 964 at this time last year. Regulators approved seven permits for drilling at new locations across Kansas last week, five of them east of Wichita and two in the western half of the state.
Triple-A says the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline last week was $2.20. Kansas remains just a fraction below two dollars, among just ten states below that price. Most of the stations across Hays and Great Bend were at $1.999 on Thursday. Filling up your 15-gallon tank will cost you about four dollars less than a year ago at this time.
The Energy Information Administration says U.S. crude-oil inventories dropped by nearly half a million barrels last week to 507.8 million barrels. EIA reports stockpiles are about 15% above the five-year average for this time of year.
The government reported an increase in U.S. crude production for the third week in a row. The Energy Information Administration reports total output of over 10.8 million barrels during the week ending August 14. That's an increase of 143,000 barrels a day over the week before.
The government said U.S. refineries imported 5.9 million barrels per day last week, an increase of 185,000 barrels per day. The four-week average shows we imported nearly 17% less than during the same four week period a year ago.
Oil-by-rail in the United States slumped again last week, down nearly 14% compared to a year ago at 10,517 tanker cars. The Association of American Railroads says increases in shipments of grain and other farm products helped bolster the totals for intermodal traffic, but overall, freight train use is still three percent lower than last year at this time.
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with energy lease sales along the northern coastal plain of Alaska. The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is listed in 2017's federal tax cut bill, which requires at least two lease sales of 400,000 acres each. A formal Record of Decision by the BLM last week set the standards for land use and bidding in an auction expected before December 21. State officials hailed the move, which has been blocked or delayed for nearly forty years due to concerns over wildlife in the area. The Alaska governor's office says there are between four and twelve billion barrels of crude oil there.
Federal lease sales for parcels in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas netted more than eight million dollars last week. There were 113 parcels totaling more than 76 square miles in the offering. The government says about half of that will go to the states where the leases are located. One company paid more than $21,000 per acre for a 120-acre parcel in southeastern New Mexico.
One of the largest brokerages in the U.S. is being sued by traders who lost money back in April when futures prices dropped below zero. Bloomberg reports the plaintiffs were unable to sell the worthless contracts due to a system failure. The lawsuit was filed August 18 in the Northern District of California. It alleges that E-Trade Securities did not properly test its online trading platform for the possibility of negative oil futures prices in advance. The plaintiffs also say the firm failed to disclose that futures prices could fall below the zero mark. That's exactly what happened April 20. The plaintiffs say they tried to mitigate their losses by selling their worthless futures contracts, but they say the system crashed. This is not the first lawsuit over negative futures prices. In June, a class action suit was filed against the United States Oil Fund, also known as USO, for allegedly not disclosing risks properly.