By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
Chevron closes on its biggest deal yet, several months after it was first announced. Chevron has completed its $53 BILLION acquisition of Hess Corporation, after winning an arbitration against ExxonMobil. The dispute was over Hess assets northeast of South America offshore Guyana. The arbitration delayed the takeover for over a year. The government also cleared the way for Hess Chairman John Hess to join Chevron's Board of Directors.
The government delivers the first 300,000 barrels from strategic stockpiles to help out a struggling refinery, with more to come. The Energy Department is offering up to a million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in what's called an exchange deal. ExxonMobil's refinery in Louisiana has been socked by what are described as offshore supply issues. They took delivery of the 300,000 barrels last week. According to the agreement, the oil company will replace the borrowed SPR crude along with additional barrels at no cost to taxpayers. Total SPR stockpiles drop to 402.7 million barrels for the week. EIA says commercial stockpiles dropped nearly four million barrels to just over 422 million.
Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson dropped a quarter a barrel on Friday, and starts this week at fifty-seven fifty ($57.50) per barrel. That's down 25 cents from last week, up a dollar-seventy-five ($ 1.75) from the first of the month and down four and a half dollars ($4.50) a barrel from the first of the year.
Weekly drilling stats spike in eastern Kansas. West of Wichita...not so much. *Regulators okayed 24 new drilling locations, 21 of them east of Wichita. That's 391 permits so far in 2025, compared to 537 last year at this time.*Independent Oil and Gas Service reports 31 newly-completed wells across the state. Just four of those are west of Wichita, including one well in Barton County and one in Ellis County. The year-to-date total is 682 wells statewide, compared to 713 a year ago.*At 22 active rigs, the Kansas Rig Count is up 70% from last week and more than 80% from last month. Independent Oil and Gas Service reports eleven active rigs in eastern Kansas, which is up six. The tally in Western Kansas is up three to eleven rigs.
Baker Hughes reports a slight increase in its weekly rig count, which dropped to a nearly four-year low last week. The latest weekly tally is up by nine gas rigs. The breakout for horizontal drilling is up seven rigs. The tally for oil rigs was down by two rigs from a week ago. New Mexico is up four rigs. The count in Texas is down two rigs from last week.
US crude production dipped slightly last week to 13,375,000 barrels per day, a two-month low. Four-week average output remains a few daily barrels above 13.4 million and is up from a year ago. Average production so far this year is just over 13.46 million barrels per day, up nearly 2.5 percent compared to a year ago.
The government reports a big spike in crude exports, but the US remains a net crude importer. The US imports more crude oil than it imports by 2.8 million barrels per day. Our refined product exports outpace product imports by more than five million barrels per day, making us a net petroleum exporter by 2.2 million barrels a day.
Crude imports increased to 6.4 million barrels a day, up 366,000 barrels a day from last week. This week's tally is up nearly 700,000 barrels a day from a year ago, and is 800,000 higher than two years ago.
Crude exports averaged just over 3.5 million barrels a day, up by 27 percent from a week ago, but down 11 percent from last year at this time. The four-week average is up 21 percent from a year ago.