By John P. Tretbar
News from the Oil Patch
Yet another crimp in the energy supply chain, as important transportation hubs dry up. Barges are reducing cargoes as river levels drop on Europe's most important waterways. Water levels on the Rhine River dipped so much that a 110-meter oil barge had to reduce its load to one-thousand tons at the waypoint of Kaub in Germany. That's about 40% of the capacity of the barge, according to data from Spotbarge cited by Bloomberg.
Your road-trip keeps getting cheaper, although, not exactly cheap. The national average pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline dropped a nickel Wednesday to $4.45 per gallon. That's a dime cheaper than last week but more than a dollar higher than last year.
Diesel is a penny lower on the day, eight cents lower than last week, and two dollars higher than last year. The statewide average for regular is just over four dollars, but local prices are under that mark. Your 15-gallon fill-up dips below $60 but is still about five dollars more than a month ago. The average for Kansas diesel is $5.06, down two cents on the day but up nearly two dollars from last year.
The board of directors at BP removed Chairman and CEO Albert Manifold for unspecified concerns over government oversight. The company appointed Ian Tyler as interim chairman as the search for a permanent replacement gets underway. Manifold was appointed to the top job late last year. The announcement Tuesday said the board was surprised and disappointed to learn of what it called governance oversight and conduct issues which it deemed unacceptable.
The weekly Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes is up ten oil rigs while dropping three seeking natural gas. The total of 558 active rigs is down eight rigs from a year ago nationwide. The Texas tally is up ten rigs from last week, but down eleven from last a year ago. The rig count in New Mexico is down three rigs from last week.
After a big drop last week, the Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service is up one to 18 rigs statewide, increasing by one in eastern Kansas to seven rigs. Operators on Friday were drilling on leases in Ellis, Finney, Haskell, and Rooks counties out of eleven active rigs west of Wichita.Weekly totals from Independent Oil and Gas Service show a total of 262 wells drilled from spud to full depth so far this year, down 99 wells or 27 percent from last year at this time. Total footage is down about 40%.
Operators in Kansas completed eleven wells this week, 281 so far this year, compared to 485 a year ago. There are seven new wells east of Wichita and four in Western Kansas, including two in Finney County and one in Stafford County.Kansas regulators okay 34 new drilling locations. That's 280 permits for the year so far, which is ahead of last year by nine.
There are 17 new permits in eastern Kansas and seven west of Wichita. Of those, two are in Ellis County, one is in Gove County and two are in Haskell County.Weekly US crude production is down slightly but still tops 13.7 million barrels a day for only the second time in history.
The Weekly Petroleum Status Report from EIA notes average output down by just eight thousand barrels a day from the record set last week. The four-week average is over 13.6 Million barrels a day.
Commercial crude-oil stockpiles drop 7.9 million barrels from a week ago to 445 million barrels as of May 15th. Strategic reserves drop nearly ten million barrels this week to just over 374 million barrels. That's down nearly seven percent, or 26 million barrels from a year ago.Crude exports set a new number two, rising more than 100-thousand barrels from the previous second-best set last week, to just over 5.6 million barrels a day. Crude exports topped 6.4 million barrels a day three weeks ago to set the all-time record high.
US crude imports are up 116-thousand barrels per day over last week, rising to six million barrels a day. The four-week average is down slightly from a year ago, at 5.8 million. EIA reports our Imports from Canada drop by more than 300-thousand barrels a day this week. Imports from Mexico are up 210-thousand daily barrels, and Venezuelan imports are up 125-thousand.
North Dakota once again notches a remarkable recovery from a big winter downturn. The number of producing oil wells in the number-three oil-producing state set a record in March. The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources on Friday reported 19,639 active wells, up 224 wells over a month earlier and the highest tally ever. Crude production rose to one-point-one-four-million (1.14 million) barrels a day, up nine-thousand barrels a day over February.
Production of natural gas is up more than two percent. The gas-flared volume drops nearly five percent and the gas-capture rate at oil wells increases to 96.3%.
A new metric gaining scrutiny in North Dakota is the increasing lengths of the wells drilled horizontally. The average length of the lateral wells in North Dakota in 2021 was under ten thousand feet. That increased to 11-thousand feet by the year 2024. In the first three months of this year, DMR reports an average lateral length is over 13,400 feet.