By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
High seas tanker-takeovers prompt slightly higher crude prices. Over the weekend the Trump Administration was pursuing a third oil tanker in the Ocean near Venezuela amid a blockade of that country. Light sweet crude in New York on Friday closed a half-dollar higher at fifty-six sixty-six ($56.66) per barrel. NYMEX benchmark offers rose two-and-a-half percent on Monday, to trade a few cents shy of $58 a barrel. London Brent was rising toward $62 a barrel at midday Monday.
Kansas crude prices rose a dollar and a half on Friday, but remain two-and-a-half dollars lower than at the first of the month, and more than $13 a barrel lower than a year ago. Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson starts the week at $47 a barrel, a low price only achieved twice since 2021.
Kansas is among the ten cheapest states for holiday road trips, but Oklahoma and Colorado have us beat. Automotive fuel demand nationwide is down, and the government reports fuel inventories continue to rise. Last week there were only 13 states with average pump prices over three dollars. The auto club AAA reported a national average of $2.89 for a gallon of regular gasoline Thursday. The cheapest holiday road trip can be found in Oklahoma, where regular gas averaged $2.34 per gallon. Colorado prices average a fraction under $2.50. The Sunflower Statewide average is a fraction over $2.52 a gallon. Your 15-gallon fill-up will cost you about five dollars less than it did during the week before Christmas last year.
As the calendar year wanes, so does oilfield activity. Kansas regulators give their blessing to one new drilling permit this week, in Linn County, the only new drilling location approved statewide. So far this year, there are 636 permits for new drilling locations across Kansas, which is just over half the total reported at this time last year.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports overall drilling activity trails last year by 38%. Operators completed 13 wells statewide, with three in Western Kansas. Total well completions so far this year trail last year by nearly three hundred wells. More than a thousand completions reported so far this year include 175 dry holes. That's 16 percent, which matches last year.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service is down one in eastern Kansas at four rigs, and up one at eleven active rigs West of Wichita. The weekly tally is down 12 percent from a month ago and 38 percent from a year ago. Drilling continued Friday on a lease in Gove County.
Baker Hughes reports 542 active on-land drilling rigs as of December 19th, down six rigs from last week. The tally of oil rigs drops by eight. The breakout for horizontal drilling rigs is down by five. Louisiana drops by five; New Mexico is down two. Texas is up two rigs. Colorado and Utah are each down one rig.
US crude-oil production surpassed 13.8 million barrels a day for a sixth consecutive week, but dropped ten thousand daily barrels from last week. Last week was not the best ever, but updated numbers show last week does rank second best. That makes this week number-three. The Energy Information Administration reports cumulative production, and the four-week average, each now exceed 13.5 million barrels a day. The current spike in US crude production began in November. The report for the week through November 7 reflects an increase of 211,000 daily barrels to the current all-time high over 13.86 million barrels per day. Output has topped 13.8 million each week since.
EIA reports another 200,000 barrels added to the nation's strategic crude reserves, which now top 412 million barrels. Commercial inventories drop by 1.3 million barrels from last week to just over 424 million barrels as of December 12. That's nearly three percent higher than a year ago. The government says stockpiles are about four percent below the five-year average for this time of year.
BP announced a major leadership change, naming Meg O'Neill as the super-major's new chief executive officer, starting this spring. O’Neill is currently CEO at Woodside Energy and worked at ExxonMobil for more than 20 years. She replaces Murray Auchincloss, who stepped down last week, from the CEO's office and the board of directors, after a long-running clash with the Chairman.
After raising its expectations for natural-gas and propane prices...and lowering it's expectations for temperatures, the government now says your heating bills will spike a little more than usual this winter. The Energy Information Administration adjusts its assessment of the marketplace and the forecast each month from October to March. Temperatures this month are now expected to average about eight percent colder than the average of the last ten Decembers. EIA says retail residential natural gas and propane prices have also topped its forecasts. Spot prices for natural gas jumped 30 percent from October to November.
At 6.5 million barrels a day, weekly US crude imports are down slightly from a week ago, slightly more from a year ago, and slightly more than that from two years ago. The four week average is slightly less than 6.5 million, dropping a quarter-million barrels a day or about two percent from a year ago.
Weekly crude exports are up more than 600,000 barrels a day from a week ago at 4.6 million barrels per day. The four-week average is just under four million, an increase of nearly 200,000 barrels a day from a year ago.