shale oil

The latest Drilling Productivity Report from the EIA, released yesterday (February 13, 2017), shows that while the combined rig count in the seven major U.S. shale plays rose about 25% in the fourth quarter of 2016 versus the previous quarter, and the number of wells drilled was up 29%, well completions were up a paltry 1%, leading to an increase in the inventory of drilled-but-uncompleted wells (DUCs). Completions accelerated a bit in January 2017, but DUCs still continued to rise. That certainly seems counterintuitive.  With crude oil prices stable in the low $50’s over the past few months you might think that producers would be pulling DUCs out of inventory, and in fact there have been statements to that effect in several producer investor calls. This is not just an exercise in energy fundamentals numerology. If the DUC inventory is increasing, then production will not be ramping up as fast as the growing rig count would imply. But what if, as some early signs indicate, the historical relationships are out of whack and the DUC inventory isn’t growing but rather declining? In that case, forecast models could be understating the outlook for production growth, and the market could be in for a more rapid and steeper rebound in oil and gas production than many expect. In today’s blog, we delve into the DUC inventory data and its potential upside risk to production forecasts.

Alan Greenspan coined the phrase "irrational exuberance" during his tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He used it in a 1996 speech in reference to the excessively high prices of "dot-com" companies. He worried that assets were overvalued. Four years later, the dot-com bubble burst, confirming his concerns. Presently we are observing the last gasps of irrational exuberance in petroleum. Call it "petro-exuberance." This malady became apparent during a session on oil market issues at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Some panelists clearly had a case of irrational exuberance, an overenthusiasm no different from what we saw at the end of the dot-com and the housing crises.

Prices for U.S. domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude on the CME NYMEX futures exchange crashed $7.54/Bbl to $66.15/Bbl Friday (November 28, 2014) - down 11 percent since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and 38 percent since their recent high in late June. International benchmark Brent crude prices on the ICE futures exchange fell 10 percent to $70.02 /Bbl over the holiday and are down 39 percent since June. The underlying cause is oversupply but the short term trigger for last week’s nosedive was OPEC’s failure to respond to falling prices at their Thanksgiving meeting in Vienna by reining in production. Today we discuss the fate of crude prices after the OPEC meeting.

There is a bright future for crude by rail in the oil shale plays regardless of what happens to crude price differentials. That is because the flexibility of rail transport meshes well with the rhythm of shale oil development. Meantime Canadian heavy crude will be the focus for rail terminal development in the near term as continued pipeline delays force producers to look seriously at rail options. And the economics of raw bitumen by rail may end up undercutting pipelines. Today we look ahead to these trends.

<p>The gasoline market has become highly regionalized with the country apparently divided into areas of feast and famine. Shortages, low margins and declining refinery capacity have plagued the Northeast and California. Increased gasoline exports have rewarded Gulf Coast refiners.</p>

News flash!  ---Rail transportation has become a very big deal in the business of transporting crude oil, NGLs and petroleum products!!----The whole world does not revolve around pipelines!   Yup, the media has discovered that hydrocarbons can ride the rails.   Never mind that liquid hydrocarbons have been moving in tank cars for 150 years.   The news is that rail is having a market impact like never before.  And that is because there has been a strategic shift in the way rail transportation is being used by the petroleum industry.   In Part II of our series we’ll dissect the strategies being used and discuss how things are evolving in the world of tank cars.

Shale oil has created a problem for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).  And that in turn has created a problem for U.S.-flag vessel operators.  Those operators are trying to create problems for Gulf Coast refiners.  And this whole situation could create a problem for the crude oil market if new hostilities come to the Middle East…a problem with significant consequences for crude prices.