By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
The OPEC-Plus export alliance last week postponed its plans to increase crude oil production, but that was not enough to forestall a big drop in prices. The group kept in place its long-term plans to resume production increases, but pushed back the completion date by two months.
October NYMEX crude settled Friday at $67.67 per barrel, the lowest closing price since June of 2023, down $1.48 on the day and a weekly loss of nearly six dollars a barrel. Prices were a few cents higher in morning trading on Monday.
The average for the month of August was a fraction over $65.62 per barrel. The average for August last year was over $71.
Kansas Common Crude dropped a dollar and a half to start the week at $58 per barrel, down $5.75 in seven days and ten dollars less than the average price so far this year at CHS in McPherson.
The Kansas Corporation Commission reports 89 new intent-to-drill notices last month. After updating totals from March and April, the total for the year stands at 742 intents statewide, compared to 901 by the end of August last year.
Barton County reports six new intents, 23 so far this year. That's down from 29 a year ago but up from 13 through August of 2022. Ellis County notches two new ones, nine so far this year, compared to 24 a year ago and 16 the year before that. In Russell County there are eight new notices so far this year, which is double the tally by this time last year, but down one from 2022. Stafford County reports eleven new intents through August of this year, compared to 21 a year ago and 12 two years ago.
Rig counts are down across the country and across Kansas.
Baker Hughes reported 582 active rigs nationwide, down one gas rig from last week, with declines in Colorado, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, and increases in West Virginia and New Mexico.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports ten active rigs in eastern Kansas, down one, and 15 rigs west of Wichita, which is unchanged. The statewide total is down 17% from a month ago and 31% lower than a year ago.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports six new well completions across the state last week, 907 so far this year, which is down 145 completions from a year ago.
Kansas regulators report two new drilling permits in Barton County out of five in western Kansas and 21 statewide. With 685 so far this year, the statewide total lags behind last year by 149 permits.
The U.S. added 1.8 million barrels of crude to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the biggest weekly increase since DOE began refilling the reserves. Our refills are $16 a barrel cheaper than the original sales price, for a profit of nearly $29 million in the last week, and over $246 million since April.
EIA says commercial stockpiles dropped 6.9 million barrels to just over 418 million, their lowest level in eleven months.
U.S. crude production held steady at 13.3 million barrels per day. The four-week average is up four percent from the same four weeks last year. Cumulative production so far this year is up nearly seven percent from a year ago.
The U.S. imports more crude than we export by about two million barrels per day. We export more petroleum products than we import by about 5.5 million barrels a day. Thus, we are a net petroleum exporter by just under 3.5 million barrels per day.
Crude exports averaged 3.7 million barrels a day. Four-week average crude exports are up nearly a million barrels a day over last year. Petroleum product exports averaged 7.3 million barrels a day.
U.S. crude imports were down 768,000 daily barrels to 5.8 million last week. Over the last four weeks, crude imports averaged 6.3 million barrels a day, down eight percent from a year ago. Product imports averaged 1.8 million barrels a day.
U.S. operators produced nearly 2.4 billion barrels of crude oil in the first six months of the year. That's just over 13 million barrels a day. The tally in Kansas for January through June is 72,846 barrels per day. The government's monthly production report shows U.S. output rose to 13.2 million barrels per day in June, the latest data available. That's the second best monthly average this year.
Production in the Sunflower State averaged 77,000 barrels a day in June. Output here rose two percent from May but was down slightly from June of last year. Operators in Texas pumped nearly 5.6 million barrels a day, or more than 42% of the national total.
Exxon Mobil recently joined with Pioneer Natural Resources in a $60 billion merger. Now they're selling off producing conventional wells in the Permian's Central Basin in what could be a billion dollar offering. According to Bloomberg, the value of mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas sector this year has doubled to over $210 billion.