By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Oil traders and producers alike will be watching this week as producers from the "OPEC Plus" alliance meet to decide whether to relax the group's production cuts. Prices have rallied to pre-pandemic levels, but supplies are dwindling at their steepest rate in 20 years. Bloomberg reports the crude glut that piled up during the pandemic is vanishing fast, and the "OPEC Plus" group could decide to increase output.
Kansas crude prices dropped $2 Friday, but will still post February gains of $8 per barrel. Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson starts the week and the month of March at $51.75 per barrel.
Intent-to-drill notices for the month of February were down by more than half from totals for the month before and a year earlier. The Kansas Corporation Commission reports 31 intents filed statewide last month. That's 110 intents statewide so far this year. Ellis, Russell and Stafford counties each reported on new intent-to-drill notice last month.
Independent Oil & Gas Service reports a slight increase in the rig count in Western Kansas this week with 12, and increase of two rigs. East of Wichita, the count was three active rigs, down three from the week before. Operators reached total depth at one lease in Ellis County and one lease in Stafford County. The weekly Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes shows an increase of four oil rigs to the active count of 402. Texas was up three while the count in New Mexico was up one.
Kansas regulators okayed six new drilling permits last week, all of them in the western half of the state. That brings the running total this year to 100 permits for drilling at new locations in Kansas.
Independent Oil & Gas Service says Kansas operators completed eleven wells last week, six of them east of Wichita, and five in Western Kansas. Those include a service well in Russell County and an oil well in Stafford County.
After a magnitude 4.2 earthquake rumbled under the town of Manchester in northern Oklahoma on Friday (Feb. 19), regulators there locked down some oilfield activity over the following weekend. Three disposal wells within three miles of the epicenter were shut down under the directive, and another 13 wells were ordered to cut back disposal volumes by half. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission staff says that amounts to about 7,000 barrels of wastewater per day. Data supplied by the OCC shows 61 earthquakes of magnitude two or greater in January, the highest monthly total since May of last year. In part, officials credit these commission directives limiting wastewater disposal with the sharp decrease in the seismicity rate in the Sooner State. Oklahoma reached a monthly peak of nearly 948 earthquakes in March 2015. Local officials did not receive any reports of damage or injury from the Manchester quake.
U.S. crude inventories jumped 1.3 million barrels last week. Stockpiles are marginally below the five-year average for this time of year. Crude production dropped by more than a million barrels per day last week. The Energy Information Administration says current output is just shy of 9.7 Million barrels per day. Compare that to a year ago, when output was a few barrels short of 13 million per day. EIA says weekly imports dropped by 1.3 million barrels per day. The four-week average for imports is down more than 13% from a year ago.
Oil-by-rail shipments plummeted during the recent cold snap. The Association of American Railroads reports just 8.148 tanker cars hauling petroleum for the week ending February 20. That's down nearly 2,000 cars from the week before, and a nearly 40% drop from a year earlier.
With the forced shutdown of Gulf Coast and some Midwest refineries due to winter weather, gasoline stockpiles have tightened and gas prices have skyrocketed. Triple-A reported the most expensive national average since October of 2019. Two-thirds of statewide averages were up by double-digits last week, with spikes of anywhere from ten to 22 cents a gallon. The average across Kansas on Thursday was over two forty-seven a gallon, an increase of 12 cents over last week. Pump prices are up to $2.55 a gallon across Hays and $2.57 in Great Bend. Your 15-gallon fill-up is up more than two dollars from a week ago, up four dollars from last month, and nearly five dollars higher than last year at this time.
Africa's biggest crude producer is playing hardball with one of the world's largest oil companies. A court in Nigeria has now frozen access to the bank accounts of Royal Dutch Shell. The action comes amid a legal dispute with a local producer over a pipeline deal six years ago. The dispute is just one among a growing list of legal entanglements related to Shell’s business in Nigeria. A buyer is demanding billions in damages, claiming Shell misrepresented the condition of the pipeline and under-counted crude volumes. Shell calls the lawsuit baseless and is working to overturn the court order.
The government of Canada formalized some new winter safety rules for rail transport of dangerous goods including petroleum products. The new regulations include some common-sense items like risk assessments, stronger track inspection and maintenance programs, and new technology requirements. One will have an immediate impact on the bottom line of some operators. Trains hauling large quantities of crude oil or liquid petroleum gases will now face a speed limit across Canada. These trains can travel up to 35 mph in metro areas and 40 mph at all other places.