By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
Crude oil prices race to the skies, with fuel prices hot on their heels. Oil prices in New York vaulted more than six percent by dinner time on Monday and another seven percent by lunchtime on Tuesday. Offers on Tuesday ranged up to a high just under $78 a barrel, which would be a 19% increase over a week ago. Brent crude is also bounding, up ten percent in two days to just under $83 a barrel by tea time Tuesday.
Fuel prices jumped eleven cents in one day nationwide to $3.10 per gallon. Kansas pump prices jump nearly 13 cents to just under $2.70/gal. Diesel prices are up 17 cents from a week ago across the state ($3.525) and across the nation ($3.891).
A technical glitch that halted trading on expiry day sends a brief shock through the futures marketplace. The CME Group's Globex electronic trading platform went dark for some metals and all natural-gas futures last Wednesday. The company confirmed a full trading halt shortly after noon, its third significant breakdown in the last year. What the firm described as a "technical glitch" happened on expiry day, when futures contracts expire. Trading was halted and some orders were simply canceled at a time when many futures traders traditionally roll positions over into the next month. Despite the chaos, or perhaps because of it, natural gas prices settled nearly two percent higher.
The government reports the largest increase in crude-oil inventories in nearly six years. Commercial stockpiles increased 16 million barrels to just under 436 million. That's up nearly six million barrels from a year ago, but The Energy Information Administration says stockpiles remain about three percent below the five-year seasonal average. Strategic reserves are unchanged this week at just over 415 million barrels, up five percent from a year ago. Gasoline stockpiles were down slightly, while diesel fuel inventories rose. The government says demand for each is up slightly this week.
Refined petroleum product imports rose more than half a million daily barrels, surpassing two million barrels a day for the first time since last September. That marks a 40% increase from last week, a 22% bump over a year ago, and a 47% increase over two years ago. Petroleum product exports dipped by 350,000 barrels a day.
Crude imports increased slightly to just over 6.6 million barrels a day. The four-week average is up five percent from the same four weeks last year. Crude oil exports dropped by about a quarter million barrels a day to just over 4.3 million. The four-week average remains over four million.
US regulators last week released the final monthly oil production report for the year 2025. Domestic operators pumped over 423 million barrels in December, for a daily average of 13.6 million barrels. For the year, output dropped to just under 13.6 million barrels per day. Kansas output in December averaged just under 68,000 barrels per day, down from just over 68,000 in November. For the year, the Sunflower State averaged just over 69-thousand barrels per day. That's down more than 4,000 barrels a day from the year before, according to the latest data from EIA.
Texas produced 5.7 million barrels per day last year. That's up more than half a million barrels a day from the year before and accounts for more than 41 percent of output nationwide. EIA reports New Mexico finished the year at 2.24 million barrels day, an increase of nearly a quarter million daily barrels. The report from North Dakota dropped slightly to 1.15 million barrels a day in annual output last year. Regulators in North Dakota report a steeper drop in output in December.
Operators in Kansas have drilled 69 wells from spud to completion this year, down 43% from the tally of 121 a year ago. Total footage drilled lags behind last year by 59%. Independent Oil and Gas Service reports oilfield activity remains sluggish, down an average of 46% from a year ago. The Kansas Rig Count is unchanged from last week with three active rigs east of Wichita and five in Western Kansas. That's down 38 percent from a month ago and 46 percent from a year ago. Drilling was underway Friday on leases in Rooks and Finney County, and was about to begin on a lease in Gove County.
Regulators report 36 new intent-to-drill notices across the state of Kansas, for a total of 78 so far this year. That's down from 119 by the end of February last year and 144 the year before that. The search engine on the Kansas Corporation Commission Web site returns ten new intent-to-drill notices in Linn County, and five in Rooks County. Stafford County adds two. Gove and Finney counties each add one.
Kansas regulators okayed seven new drilling sites this week, all of them in Western Kansas, including two in Rooks County and two in Graham County. That's 60 new permits this year, compared to 109 last year at this time.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports four completions this week, all in the eastern half of the state, with one in Johnson County, and three in Woodson County. That's 108 completions this calendar year, compared to 211 last year at this time.
US crude production this week drops slightly, due largely to a weather outage in Alaska, but remains over 13.7 million barrels a day for a third week in a row. Production over the last four weeks averages just under 13.6 million barrels a day. Cumulative output so far this year is over 13.6 million, an increase of 1.5% from a year ago.
US regulators last week released the final monthly oil-production tally for the year 2025. Domestic operators pumped over 423 million barrels in December, for a daily average of 13.6 million barrels. For the year, output dropped to just under 13.6 million.
The Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes increases by one gas rig, but drops by two oil rigs, for a total of 550 rigs. That's down 43 drilling rigs from last year at this time. The tally in the prolific Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico is 240 rigs, up one for the week but down 65 rigs from a year ago.
In the decade since our first exports of Liquefied Natural Gas, the United States has gone from 500 Million cubic feet per day in 2016, to over 15 billion cubic feet per day last year. Today, the US is the world’s largest LNG exporter, ahead of both Australia and Qatar. The Energy Information Administration now forecasts US exports over 18 billion cubic feet per day by the end of next year.
A major winter cold snap cuts into oil and gas production in North Dakota, the number-three US producer. The Department of Mineral Resources reports a six-percent drop in December oil output, and a six percent in drop in natural gas. Oil output dips to 34.7 million barrels, or 1.12 Million barrels per day. That's down 76,000 barrels a day from the month before. The number of producing wells in North Dakota continues to drop from the all-time high reached in October, dipping another 172 wells in December. The number of inactive wells rose by more than six hundred.
North Dakota natural gas production dropped six percent. The amount of gas that was flared, or burned off at the well head, is down 9%. The gas-capture rate, the amount of gas captured on site and marketed, held steady at 95.2%.