By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
NYMEX crude drops to its lowest closing price since May 30. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped $1.61 to a settlement price of $61.87 per barrel. Futures prices in New York rebounded half a dollar or more on Monday, topping $62 by midday.
Kansas prices also reached three-month lows. Kansas Common crude is fetching $52 a barrel, the lowest price at CHS in McPherson since June 1.
The government reports an increase in US crude stockpiles of nearly 2.5 million barrels to 420.7 million. Stockpiles are about four percent below the five-year seasonal average.
The government added another half-million barrels to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The total is now up 25 million barrels or 6.6 percent from a year ago.
US crude-oil production topped 13.4 million barrels a day for the second week in a row. The Energy Information Administration says output of 13,423,000 barrels a day in the week through August 29th, down 16,000 barrels from the week before.
US crude output topped 13.5 million barrels per day in June for the first time this year. The government's monthly output report is up one percent from May and 2.5 percent higher than in June of 2024. Output in the top three states also advanced. Texas output rose 200,000 barrels a day(+0.2%) to just over 5.7 million. Production in New Mexico spiked 1.8 percent to 2.2 million barrels a day. Output in North Dakota rose nearly three percent to 1.15 million barrels per day.
US crude oil production through June surpassed 2.4 million barrels, averaging 13,389 barrels per day. Texas pumped nearly 5.7 million barrels per day in the first six months of the year. That's almost as much as the next 12 states combined, which produced a combined 5.8 million barrels per day.
Kansas output averaged 71,000 daily barrels in June, up 2,000 daily barrels or 0.7 percent from May. That's down 4.3 percent from June of last year. For the first six months of the year, Kansas has averaged 69-thousand barrels a day.
The US imported 6.7 million barrels a day last week, an increase of more than half a million daily barrels. The Energy Information Administration reports the four week average is up 4.4 percent from last year at this time.
The Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes is up two oil rigs but down one gas rig for a total of 537 active rigs across the US. The tally for horizontal rigs is down two. The report for Texas is up two while New Mexico is down two from a week ago.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service is up two rigs in eastern Kansas, but down one west of Wichita for a total of 18 active rotary drilling rigs. That tally is down 28 percent from a year ago.
Regulators report 54 new intent-to-drill notices in Kansas last month, down from 91 in July and 87 in August of last year. A Web site search at the KCC includes three intents in Stafford County in August and three in Haskell County.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports 12 new well completions this week with seven in eastern Kansas and five west of Wichita including one in Finney County. That's 813 new well-completions so far this year, compared to 907 by this time last year.
Kansas regulators okayed nine drilling locations across the state. The four new permits in Western Kansas include one in Barton County. That's 487 new drilling permits so far this year, down from 685 a year ago.
The dramatic spike in US output over the last five years is driven almost entirely by ten counties. Between 2020 and 2024, crude oil production in the United States grew by nearly two million barrels a day. The government says 93% of that growth came in just ten counties in Texas and New Mexico. Production from the rest of the United States, including offshore output, grew by just 130,000 barrels a day.
Output in two counties, Lea and Eddy in New Mexico, grew by nearly a million barrels per day during those five years, more than half the growth reported nationwide. Eight additional counties in Texas account for 40% of national output growth.