By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
Kansas Common crude drops 25 cents a barrel on the day Friday. The benchmark in McPherson remains four dollars higher than a week ago, but just 25 cents behind the first of the month. Current prices are just 25 cents behind the same week a year ago, but they're twenty-five DOLLARS lower than two years ago.
NYMEX crude prices dropped slightly on Friday, but closed the day and the week at sixty-one fifty ($61.50) per barrel, a four dollar weekly gain. Prices posted slight gains Monday. By lunchtime WTI was trading over $61 a barrel and London Brent was a few cents over $66.
Crude production in the United States drops slightly from last week's all-time high, to tie for the third highest weekly tally ever: 13,629,000 barrels per day. Weekly output has exceeded 13.6 million just four times in history, three times this month, and once in December of last year.
Commercial crude-oil inventories dropped by a million barrels this week. EIA reports stockpiles of just under 423 million barrels, or about four percent below the five year average for this time of year.
The Energy Information Administration reported another weekly spike in strategic crude stockpiles. now up 800-thousand barrels from a week ago and 24 million from a year ago. EIA on Tuesday announced another million-barrel offer for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, at prices more than $30 cheaper than the sales price three years ago.
The government said crude-oil imports rose by nearly half a million barrels a day to 5.9 million. Crude exports dropped by 250-thousand daily barrels but remained over four million. Four-week average imports are down nearly five percent from a year ago.
Fuel ethanol demand in the US is dragging, but international demand is not. The government now says exports of fuel ethanol, refined largely from corn, are poised to set a record for the second year in a row, and could exceed 138,000 barrels a day this year.
The Energy Information Administration reports big drops in stockpiles of diesel and regular gasoline, but demand for gasoline continues to drag. Average demand over the last four weeks trails last year by three percent.
The US rig count from Baker Hughes rose this week fueled largely by an increase of four offshore drilling rigs. Louisiana reports an increase of three active rigs on land. Wyoming is up two, while Texas is down one.
Overall drilling activity in Kansas is down 34 percent compared to a year ago. The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service rose one in eastern Kansas and one west of Wichita for a total of 19 active rigs. Drilling was underway on Friday on leases in Ellis, Gove and Haskell counties.
The Kansas Corporation Commission reports eight new drilling permits across Kansas this week. That's 552 new drilling locations so far this year, compared to 918 by this time last year. There are four new permits east of Wichita and five in the western half of the state, including one new permit in Ellis County.
Operators competed 37 wells this week across the state, with 26 in eastern Kansas and eleven west of Wichita, with two new well-completions in Barton County, one in Ellis County and one in Gove County. Independent Oil and Gas Service reports 936 new well completions so far this year, compared to 1,082 a year ago.
Despite falling prices, economic uncertainty, layoffs and reduced investment, Texas output is pumping two-thirds of a BILLION dollars into state coffers...per month. Tax payments from the oil patch in Texas help fund public education, roads and bridges, first-responders and other public services. All told, in just the month of September, energy producers paid $444 million in oil production taxes and $224 million in natural gas production taxes, according to data from the Texas Comptroller's Office. In fiscal 2024, the industry pumped more than $27 billion in state and local taxes and royalties.
The number-three crude producing state notes a slight drop in output. Operators in North Dakota pumped one-point-one-five (1.15) million barrels a day, according to the latest numbers from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources. The 19,607 producing wells across the state in August is up sixty wells from July, which was the previous all time record high.