Masters Of War

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion' As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul. And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand over your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.------- Bob Dylan 1963

Sunday, November 25, 2018

oil prices drop most since 2014; natural gas supplies drop most ever in mid-November, to a 16 year low for the date..

oil prices were lower for a 7th consecutive week, with this week's losses accelerating to the largest weekly drop since December 2014...after falling 6.2% to $56.46 barrel on a building oil glut last week, prices of US oil for December delivery initially fell to as low as $55.05 on Monday after the Russian Energy Minister hedged on cutting oil output, but recovered to end 30 cents higher $56.76 a barrel, as trading in the December oil contract expired...at the same time, the contract for January delivery of US crude, which ended the prior week at $56.68 a barrel, rose 52 cents to $57.20 a barrel, with IEA warnings on Saudi output capacity offsetting fears of Russian overproduction...now quoting January oil, prices plummeted on Tuesday as fears of a supply glut returned, falling a total of $3.77 or 6.6% to $53.43​ a barrel​, as a global stock market selloff raised the specter of ​decreasi​ng demand due to a deteriorating global economy...prices recovered a part of the pr​ior day’s losses on Wednesday, as expectations for a production cut at an early December OPEC meeting helped prices recoup, with oil ending $1.20 higher at $54.63 a barrel...while US markets were closed for the holiday, US oil prices fell in European trading on Thursday, and that selloff carried into Friday trading in the US, with oil prices initially plunging 8 percent to their lowest level in 13 months before ending the day near their lows at $50.42​ a barrel​, a 7.7% drop for the day, in a week that saw losses in excess of 11%, even as OPEC producers considered cutting production to stem the rising global ​oil ​surplus...

with yet another big drop in oil prices, we'll include a graph of US oil prices over the past two years, so you can get a sense of what the recent​ oil​ price drop looks like compared to ​its historical volatility...

November 24 2018 weekly oil prices

the above graph is a Saturday afternoon screenshot of the interactive US oil price graph at Daily FX, an online platform that provides trading news, charts, indicators and analysis of the markets...each bar on the above graph represents oil prices for a week of oil trading between October, 2016 and this past week, wherein the green bars represent the weeks when the price of oil went up, and red bars represent the weeks when the price of oil went down...for green bars, the starting oil price at the beginning of the week is at the bottom of the bar and the price at the end of the week is at the top of the bar, whereas for red or down weeks, the starting price is at the top of the bar and the price of oil at the end of the week is at the bottom of the bar...also slightly visible on this "candlestick" style graph are the faint grey "wicks" above and below each bar, to indicate trading prices during the week that were above or below the opening to closing price range for that week...as you can see, the oil price collapse of last 7 weeks has completely reversed the long rally in prices that began in the second week of October 2017....​(​note that since this graph includes off market and after hours trading, the prices shown above do not correspond exactly to the  NYMEX exchange prices we have been quoting..​.)​

​meanwhile, ​the volatility in natural gas prices that we saw last week continued into this one, but prices​ ​actually ended the week with little change....natural gas for December delivery initially jumped 42.8 cents higher to $4.700 per mmBTU on Monday's forecasts of colder weather, but then dropped 42.6 cents early Tuesday before reversing and ending ​the day ​with a loss of just 17.7 cents at 4.523 per mmBTU...the price action on Wednesday was in the opposite direction, with prices jumping to as high as $4.864 per mmBTU on a record early withdrawal of natural gas from storage, before those gains were reversed and natural gas ended the day with a loss of 7.2 cents at $4.451 per mmBTU...prices then fell another 14.3 cents on Friday to end the week at $4.308 per mmBTU, just 3.8 cents higher than where they started...

the natural gas storage report for the week ending November 16th from the EIA showed that natural gas in storage in the US fell by 134 billion cubic feet to 3,113 billion cubic feet over the week, which left our gas supplies 620 billion cubic feet, or 16.6% below the 3,733 billion cubic feet that were in storage on November 17th of last year, and 710 billion cubic feet, or 18.6% below the five-year average of 3,823 billion cubic feet of natural gas that are typically in storage on the third weekend of November....this week's 134 billion cubic feet withdrawal from US natural gas supplies was quite a bit more than the 92 to 121 billion cubic feet withdrawal that analysts had been expecting, and way more than the average of 25 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been withdrawn from storage during the second full week of November in recent years, as it was the largest withdrawal of this size this early in the heating season in history; in fact, many years have not seen a natural gas withdrawal that large for the entire month of November...natural gas storage facilities in the Midwest saw a 32 billion cubic feet drop in supplies over the week, which increased the region's gas supply deficit to 12.0% below normal, and natural gas supplies in the East also fell by 32 billion cubic feet as their supply deficit rose to 11.7% below normal for this time of year...meanwhile, the South Central region saw a 55 billion cubic feet drop in their supplies, as their natural gas storage deficit jumped to 26.8% below their five-year average for the third weekend of November...at the same time, 8 billion cubic feet were pulled out of natural gas supplies in the Pacific region as their deficit from normal rose to 27.2%, while 7 billion cubic feet were withdrawn from storage in the Mountain region, where their natural gas supply deficit rose to 20.2% below normal for this time of year.... 

compared to other mid November low storage readings, this week's 3,113 billion cubic feet of natural gas in storage was 13.4% lower than the previous 5 year low of 3,594 billion cubic feet that was set on November 14th of 2014, 10.8% below the 10 year low of 3,488 billion cubic feet that was hit on November 14th of 2008, 4.9% below the 3,274 billion cubic feet of natural gas we had in storage on November 18th of 2005, and 1.3% below the 3155 billion cubic feet that were in storage to start the winter on November 14th of 2003...we have to go back​ 16 years,​ to November 15th 2002, when 3,096 billion cubic feet of natural gas were in storage, to find a lower quantity of natural gas in storage in mid-November than now....

for a visualization of what this week's natural gas withdrawal looks like historically, we have a graphic showing this year's weekly change in natural gas inventories as compared to last year's and to the long term averages:

November 21 2018 change in nat gas inventories thru Nov 16

the above graph was copied from a blog post at Bespoke Weather that was published on Wednesday of this week, shortly after the early release of the natural gas storage report...on this graph, purple shows this year's weekly additions to natural gas storage in billions of cubic feet above the zero line, and this year's weekly withdrawals from natural gas storage in billions of cubic feet below the zero line; similarly, weekly additions and withdrawals of natural gas in 2017 are shown in red, the 5 year average weekly change of natural gas in storage is shown in green, and the historical average weekly change of natural gas supplies in EIA data going back to 1992 is shown in orange...at the far left, you can see the record withdrawal of 359 billion of cubic feet that used 11.5% of all the natural gas we had on hand during the first week in January​ of this year​, and a withdrawal of 288 billion cubic feet during the third week of January that would have also been a record withdrawal if not for the first week; those 2 big withdrawals thus dropped our natural gas supplies to 17.5% below normal to start the year...the cold April further reduced supplies vis a vis normal, as you can see that the averages show we should have been adding to supplies at that time of year....through most of the summer, our additions to storage were fairly close the normal range, but by then the stage had already been set for natural gas supplies to be at a 15 year low to start this winter...

to see what kind of temperature factors caused this week's large withdrawal, and what kind of temperatures will be influencing next week's natural gas supply report, we'll next look at the most recent average temperature summary from the EIA's natural gas storage dashboard:

November 24 2018 daily average temps thru Nov 22nd

the above graphic from the EIA's natural gas storage dashboard gives us both the average daily temperature from November 9th thru November 22nd in each of the five natural gas regions, as well as a color-coded variance from normal for each of those daily temperature averages, with shades of brown indicating the average temperatures in the region were above normal on a given date, while shades of blue indicate average temperatures that were below normal for the date, as indicated in the legend at the bottom....thus this graphic gives us not only the actual average temperature for each region for each day, but also indicates how much that temperature deviated from the norm...as you can see, temperatures for every region except for the 3 Pacific states were below normal through the week ending November 16th, with both the Midwest and South Central regions, encompassing the large expanse in the middle of the country, between 15 and 19 degrees below normal on three separate days in the period...the following week, which will be reported on next week, looks a bit warmer, but not by much, as if you look at the lower line on the graphic you'll see national average temperature only rose from an average of around 42 degrees ​during the week ending November 16th ​to ​around ​44 degrees​ in the week after that​, which means we can expect another large withdrawal this coming week​,​ as consumption of natural gas for heating continues apace...

while average temperatures as shown above give us a general idea of the heating requirements over a given period, their relationship is inexact because they don't differentiate between broad sparsely populated regions of the country where heating demand might be minimal even if it is cold, and the larger cities where a cold snap would result in a large burn of natural gas for heat...moreover, an average temperature for a region like the East above, which includes all the states from Maine to Florida, tells us little about what parts of that region are seeing the heating demand corresponding to the average temperatures....for a better measure of heating demand, utilities and suppliers of heating fuels use a metric called ​heating ​degree days to determine what the daily demand for heating will be, so they can adjust their production or delivery schedules accordingly...those degree days are computed by taking the average daily temperature for a location and subtracting that number from 65 degrees, which is considered to be the temperature when most buildings will start to need heating...hence, the colder it gets, the higher the degree day factor​ becomes​, and hence ​it's a effective measure of ​heating demand...thus this next graphic, which shows us population weighted heating demand for the entire country, is much more useful in determining the ultimate consumption of natural gas...

November 23 2018 population weighted heating demand

the above graph came from a Thursday email titled "Best in Energy" that John Kemp, senior energy analyst and columnist with Reuters, sends out free​ ​daily, on request...in this graphic, the yellow graph shows the average degree days that have been needed per capita each day over the typical US heating season (starting with zero in July), while the red dots indicate the actual population weighted degree days for each day of the 2018-2019 heating season...in addition, the graph also include​s 7 white dots which are a forecast of population weighted degree days that will determine heating requirements for the next 7 days...John did not indicate the exact date for this graph, but since the first white dot shows a large spike, i'm guessing that would ​probably ​be ​for ​Thanksgiving day, when New York city and most of the Northeast saw their coldest Thanksgiving in 150 years...thus the red dots would represent the days prior to November 21st, ​with ​all ​the recent ones clustered ​roughly ​between 20 and 25 degree days per capita nationally, indicating heating requirements that would normally be more typical of mid-December...

the next graph, also from that John Kemp emailing, shows the cumulative heating degree day deviation from normal, up to and including this reporting week... 

November 23 2018 heating demand deviation from normal

in this graph, the divergence of cumulative heating degree days from normal for this year and for each of the previous three heating seasons is shown daily, with the current year shown as a solid white line, with last year's divergence shown as a solid yellow line, with the divergence from normal for the 2016/2017 heating season shown as a dashed yellow line, and with the divergence from normal of the 2015/2016 heating season shown as a dotted yellow line...note that the graphs for all three prior years trend downward, or negative from zero, because all three years experienced warmer than normal temperatures, and hence less degree days than normal...however, after a warmish October, when this year's heating requirements were also below normal, the white line for 2018-19 has now moved upwards into positive territory, meaning this year's cumulative heating requirements are now running above normal...the broader takeaway from this graph, though, is that the natural gas demand we saw over the past three years is not a good benchmark for what we'll need this year, because those years were warmer than normal, with the heating needs of both 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 roughly 17% below normal...as we pointed out four weeks ago, if our natural gas usage this winter is instead similar to that of 2014, our natural gas supplies could fall to below 200 billion cubic feet by the end of the heating season, implying widespread natural gas shortages and much higher prices....

The Latest US Oil Data from the EIA

this week's US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration, referencing the week ending November 16th, indicated a large increase in the amount of of oil used by refineries while oil imports, oil exports, and oil production were relatively little changed, and hence there was an smaller addition to our commercial crude supplies than the prior week, but the 9th increase in a row​ nonetheless​...our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 102,000 barrels per day to an average of 7,554,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 87,000 barrels per day the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 81,000 barrels per day to an average of 1,969,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 5,585,000 barrels of per day during the week ending November 16th, 183,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus exports during the prior week...over the same period, field production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly unchanged at 11,700,000 barrels per day, so our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from wells totaled an average of 17,285,000 barrels per day during this reporting week...

meanwhile, US oil refineries were using 16,855,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 16th, 423,000 barrels per day more than the amount of oil they used during the prior week, while over the same period a net of 584,000 barrels of oil per day were reportedly being added to the total amount of oil that's in storage in the US....hence, this week's crude oil figures from the EIA would seem to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 154,000 barrels per day short of what refineries reported they used during the week plus what oil was added to storage....to account for that disparity between the supply of oil and the consumption or new storage of it, the EIA inserted a (+154,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a fudge factor that is labeled in their footnotes as "unaccounted for crude oil"...(for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that "unaccounted for" oil, see this EIA explainer)....

further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports slipped to an average of 7,472,000 barrels per day, now 2.7% less than the 7,680,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year....the net 584,000 barrel per day increase in our total crude inventories included a 693,000 barrel per day increase in our commercially available stocks of crude oil, which was partly offset by a 109,000 barrel per day decrease in the amount of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, likely part of a sale of 11 million barrels from those reserves to Exxon et al that closed two and a half months earlier....this week's crude oil production was reported as unchanged at 11,700,000 barrels because the rounded figure for output from wells in the lower 48 states was unchanged at 11,200,000 barrels per day, while a 4,000 barrel per day increase to 503,000 barrels per day in oil output from Alaska was not enough to change the rounded national total...last year's US crude oil production for the week ending November 17th was at 9,658,000 barrels per day, so this week's rounded oil production figure was 21.1% above that of a year ago, and 38.8% more than the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production fell to during the last week of June of 2016...  

US oil refineries were operating at 92.7% of their capacity in using 16,855,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 16th, up from 90.1% of capacity the prior week, and the highest refinery utilization rate for mid-November since 2004....the 16,855,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were at a seasonal high for the time of year for the 22nd time out of the past 25 weeks, but were only fractionally higher than the 16,838,000 barrels of crude per day that were being processed during the week ending November 17th, 2017, when US refineries were operating at 91.3% of capacity... 

even with the big jump in the amount of oil being refined, gasoline output from our refineries was a bit lower, decreasing by 20,000 barrels per day to 10,036,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 16th, after our refineries' gasoline output had increased by 342,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 9th...with that slack in this week's gasoline output, our gasoline production during the week was thus 3.8% lower than the 10,432,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily during the same week last year....on the other hand, our refineries' production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 208,000 barrels per day to 5,201,000 barrels per day, after that output had increased by 30,000 barrels per day the prior week....nonetheless, the week's distillates production was still 2.5% lower than the 5,335,000 barrels of distillates per day that were being produced during the week ending November 17th 2017.... 

with our gasoline production little changed, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week fell by 1,295,000 barrels to 225,315,000 barrels by November 16th, the 5th decrease in the past 6 weeks, thus ​shrinking our gasoline supplies by 10,857,000 barrels since the first week of October....our gasoline supplies fell again in part because our exports of gasoline rose by 145,000 barrels per day to 885,000 barrels per day, while our imports of gasoline fell by 6,000 barrels per day to another 13 month low of 247,000 barrels per day, and while the amount of gasoline supplied to US markets fell by 7,000 barrels per day to 9,185,000 barrels per day...but even after falling most of the fall, our gasoline inventories are still at a seasonal high, 7.1% higher than last November 17th's level of 210,475,000 barrels, and roughly 7.6% above the 10 year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year...

even with the big jump in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels fell for the 9th week in a row, but only by 77,000 barrels to 119,191,000 barrels during the week ending November 16th, after our distillates supplies had fallen by 11,108,000 barrels over the prior three weeks...our distillates supplies fell again even though the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, a proxy for our domestic demand, decreased by 363,000 barrels per day to 4,270,000 barrels per day, and as our imports of distillates rose by 201,000 barrels per day to 104,000 barrels per day, while our exports of distillates fell by 132,000 barrels per day to 1,046,000 barrels per day...after this week's decrease, our distillate supplies ended the week 4.7% below the 125,032,000 barrels that we had stored on November 1​7th, 2017, and were roughly 8.4% below the 10 year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year...       

finally, even with big increase in oil refining, our commercial supplies of crude oil increased for the 9th week in a row and now for the 25th time in 2018, rising by 4,851,000 barrels during the week, from 442,057,000 barrels on November 9th to 446,908,000 barrels on November 16th...that increase means that our crude oil inventories are now roughly 6% above the five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, and roughly 28.1% above the 10 year average of crude oil stocks for the third weekend in November, with the disparity between those figures arising because it wasn't until early 2015 that our oil inventories first rose above 400 million barrels...however, since our crude oil inventories had been falling through most of the past year and a half until just recently, our oil supplies as of November 16th were still 2.2% below the 457,142,000 barrels of oil we had stored on November 17th of 2017, 8.6% below the 489,029,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on November 18th of 2016, and 2.0% below the 456,035,000 barrels of oil we had in storage on November 13th of 2015..

This Week's Rig Count

​with the Thanksgiving weekend, this week's rig count was reported on Wednesday rather than Friday and thus only covers 5 days....with that qualification, ​US drilling rig activity decreased for the third time in 9 weeks during the week ending November ​21st, as lower oil prices may be starting to influence decisions to restart rigs that are not already under contract...Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs running in the US decreased by 3 rigs to 1079 rigs over the week ending on Friday, which was still 156 more rigs than the 923 rigs that were in use as of the November ​22nd report of 2017, but down from the shale era high of 1929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, the week before OPEC ​announced their attempt to flood the global oil market...  

the count of rigs drilling for oil decreased by 3 rigs to 885 rigs this week, which was still 138 more oil rigs than were running a year ago, while it remained well below the recent high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10, 2014...at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations was unchanged at 194 rigs, which was 18 more than the 176 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, but way down from the modern high of 1,606 natural gas rigs that were deployed on August 29th, 2008...

offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico increased by 3 rigs to 25 rigs this week, which was also 3 more rigs than the 22 rigs active ​in the ​Gulf of Mexico a year ago...with no other offshore US drilling being done elsewhere either this week or a year ago, those Gulf of Mexico totals are also equal to the national offshore rig count totals.... 

the count of active horizontal drilling rigs decreased by 10 rigs to 929 horizontal rigs this week, which was still 143 more horizontal rigs than the 786 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on November 24th of last year, but down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014...on the other hand, the directional rig count increased by 2 to 73 directional rigs this week, which was also up from the 71 directional rigs that were in use during the same week of last year....in addition, the vertical rig count increased by 5 rigs to 77 vertical rigs this week, which was also up from the 66 vertical rigs that were operating on November 24th of 2017...  

the details on this week's changes in drilling activity by state and by shale basin are included in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major producing states, and the second table shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of November ​21st, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week's count (November 16th) and this week's (November ​21st) count, the third column shows last week's November 16th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and those running on the equivalent weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was on ​Wednesday the 22nd of November, 2017...

November 21 2018 rig count summary

​despite the removal of three rigs from the Texas Delaware basin, drilling in the greater Permian basin was unchanged, because 3 rigs were added to the Delaware on the New Mexico side of the state line...meanwhile, the 3 rig decrease in North Dakota despite the single rig decrease in the Williston basin leads to most noteworthy outlier in this ​week's count; that being that 2 more rigs were added in the Williston on the Montana side of the border, where there are now 4 rigs active, the most activity in Montana since February 2015; a year ago, there were 2 rigs active there...

+

+

note: there's more here...

Sunday, November 18, 2018

natural gas prices hit 4 year high, pre-winter supplies at a 15 year low; oil supplies rise most in 21 months; OPEC report, DUC wells, et al

oil prices fell for the 6th week in a row, extending their record losing streak to twelve days before recovering a small fraction of their earlier losses...after falling 4.7% to $60.19 a barrel on the US waiver of Iran sanctions last week, prices of US oil contracts for December delivery opened more than 50 cents higher on Monday morning and rose to as high as $61.28 a barrel after Saudi Arabia announced a December production cut of a million barrels a day, but then gave up those early gains after Trump warned he hopes OPEC doesn’t cut crude production because oil prices should be much lower, with prices then falling below $60 a barrel for the first time since February before steadying to close at $59.93 a barrel, a loss of 23 cents on the day and down a record 11 sessions in a row...oil prices then tumbled to one year lows in high trading volume on Tuesday as oil traders capitulated and sold their positions en masse, with oil prices ending down $4.24 or 7% at $55.69 a barrel in the largest one-day percentage decline for the contract since September 2015....oil prices finally rebounded on Wednesday, rising as much as 3% as OPEC leaders discussed a supply cut, before settling back to end with a 56 cent increase at $56.25 a barrel, after the API reported the largest increase in US crude supplies since February...oil prices managed another increase on Thursday despite a jump in US crude stockpiles and production, closing up 21 cents at $56.46 a barrel...oil prices then staged another 3% rally on Friday morning, rising as high as $57.96 a barrel on a Saudi push for a deep oil output cut, before settling back to close at $56.46 a barrel, unchanged on the day...however, after the big Tuesday selloff, oil prices still ended down 6.2% for the week, and are now down more than 26% from the 4-year high of $76.41 a barrel that they hit on October 3rd, just a little over 6 weeks earlier...

as volatile as oil prices were this week, the swings in the front month contract for natural gas almost defy explanation...natural gas contract prices for December delivery spiked 23.5 cents on a colder European weather model early Monday before pulling back anbd ending the day 6.9 cents higher at $3.788 per mmBTU, then were up limit to $4.101 per mmBTU on Tuesday on bullish weather risks and continued fear about low storage levels, before jumping nearly 20% to $4.929 per mmBTU on an even colder forecast early Wednesday in the largest price move since February 2003 and ending at $4.837 per mmBTU, the highest closing price in more than four years...however, after some warmer weather model guidance on Thursday, natural gas prices gave back all of their Wednesday gains and then some, tumbling nearly $1 to as low as $3.882 per mmBTU before recovering to close at $4.038 per mmBTU....a forecast for a cold early December sent natural gas prices flying again to as high as $4.390 per mmBTU on Friday, before settling at $4.272 per mmBTU at the close, for a net increase of 14.9% on the week...

the natural gas storage report for the week ending November 9th from the EIA showed that natural gas in storage in the US rose by 39 billion cubic feet to 3,247 billion cubic feet during that week, which left our gas supplies 528 billion cubic feet, or 14.0% below the 3,775 billion cubic feet that were in storage after a 13 billion cubic feet withdrawal on November 10th of last year, and 601 billion cubic feet, or 15.6% below the five-year average of 3,848 billion cubic feet of natural gas that are typically in storage on the second weekend of November....this week's 39 billion cubic feet increase in natural gas supplies was somewhat more than the low- to mid-30s billion cubic feet increase in stocks that was projected by major surveys, and was much above the average of 19 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been added to storage during the first full week of November in recent years, the 7th average or above average inventory increase over the past nineteen weeks...natural gas storage facilities in the Midwest saw an 11 billion cubic feet increase over the week, which reduced the region's supply deficit to 9.3% below normal, and natural gas supplies in the East increased by 4 billion cubic feet and their supply deficit fell to 9.2% below normal for this time of year...meanwhile, the South Central region saw a 30 billion cubic feet increase in their supplies, as their natural gas storage deficit decreased to 22.6% below their five-year average for the second weekend of November...on the other hand, only 1 billion cubic feet were added to supplies in the Pacific region, but their deficit from normal still fell to 24.2%, while 1 billion cubic feet were withdrawn from storage in the Mountain region, where their natural gas supply deficit rose to 17.4% below normal for this time of year.... 

the natural gas in storage as of this reporting week ending November 9th will most certainly be the high for the year, because as most of you know, the past week has seen an outbreak of winter-like cold temperatures across most of the US...this year's peak at 3,247 billion cubic feet thus compares to the lowest pre-winter peak in the past 5 years of 3611 billion cubic feet on November 7th of 2014, the 10 year low pre-winter peak of 3,488 that was hit on November 14th of 2008, and the early decade low pre-winter peaks of 3,282 billion cubic feet on November 11th of 2005, and the 3,187 billion cubic feet on that were in storage to start the winter on November 7th of 2003....to get an idea of what kind of temperature factors will be influ​​encing next week's natural gas supply report, we'll take a quick look at the most recent average temperature summary from the EIA's natural gas storage dashboard

November 16 2018 daily average temps thru Nov 15th

the above graphic from the EIA's natural gas storage dashboard gives us both the average daily temperature from November 2nd thru November 15th in each of the five natural gas regions, as well as a color-coded variance from normal for each of those daily temperature averages, with shades of brown indicating the average temperatures in the region were above normal on a given date, while shades of blue indicate average temperatures that were below normal for the date, as indicated in the legend at the bottom....thus this graphic gives us not only the actual average temperature for each region for each day, but also indicates how much that temperature deviated from the norm...we can see that average temperatures began to shift from above normal to below normal on November 7th for the Mountain and Midwest states, and by November 9th that cold weather outbreak had spread to the East Coast and South Central regions, with the latter experiencing an average 20 degree temperature drop in just a matter of days...

The Latest US Oil Data from the EIA

this week's US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration, ​referencing the week ending November 9th, indicated a moderate decrease in our crude oil exports while most other crude supply and demand metrics were relatively little changed, and hence there was an even larger addition to our commercial crude supplies ​than the prior week, the 8th increase in a row...our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 87,000 barrels per day to an average of 7,452,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 195,000 barrels per day the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 355,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,050,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 5,402,000 barrels of per day during the week ending November 9th, 268,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus exports during the prior week...over the same period, field production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,700,000 barrels per day, which means that our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from wells totaled an average of 17,102,000 barrels per day during this reporting week... 

meanwhile, US oil refineries were using 16,432,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 9th, 24,000 barrels per day more than the amount of oil they used during the prior week, while over the same period a net of 1,271,000 barrels of oil per day were reportedly being added to the oil that's in storage in the US....hence, this week's crude oil figures from the EIA would seem to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 601,000 barrels per day short of what refineries reported they used during the week plus what oil was added to storage....to account for that disparity between the supply of oil and the consumption or new storage of it, the EIA inserted a (+601,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a fudge factor that is labeled in their footnotes as "unaccounted for crude oil"...again, with an "unaccounted for crude" figure that large, one or more of this week's oil metrics must still be off by a statistically significant amount, most likely oil production, since it has historically been the least dependable of the​se reported​ metrics (for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that "unaccounted for" oil, see this EIA explainer)....that "unaccounted for crude" figure strongly suggests that US crude oil output has already topped 12 million barrels per day...

further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports fell to an average of 7,503,000 barrels per day, now 3.1% less than the 7,742,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year....the net 1,271,000 barrel per day increase in our total crude inventories included a 1,467,000 barrel per day increase in our commercially available stocks of crude oil, which was partly offset by a 196,000 barrel per day decrease in the amount of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, likely part of a sale of 11 million barrels from those reserves to Exxon et al that closed two months ago....this week's crude oil production was reported up by 100,000 barrels per day to 11,700,000 barrels on a rounded 100,000 barrels per day increase to 11,200,000 barrels per day output from wells in the lower 48 states, while an 11,000 barrel per day increase to 499,000 barrels per day in oil output from Alaska gave us the re-rounded national total of 11,700,000 barrel per day...last year's US crude oil production for the week ending November 10th was at 9,645,000 barrels per day, so this week's rounded oil production figure was 21.3% above that of a year ago, and 38.8% more than the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production fell to during the last week of June of 2016...  

US oil refineries were operating at 90.1% of their capacity in using 16,432,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 9th, up from 90.0% of capacity the prior week, a fairly normal utilization rate for the middle of November....the 16,432,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 1.2% lower than the 16,639,000 barrels of crude per day that were processed during the week ending November 10th, 2017, when US refineries were operating at 91.0% of capacity...

while the amount of oil being refined was little changed this week, gasoline output from our refineries was quite a bit higher, increasing by 342,000 barrels per day to 10,056,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 9th, after our refineries' gasoline output had decreased by 650,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 2nd...as a result of that rebound in our gasoline output, our gasoline production during the week was 2.1% higher than the 9,852,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily during the same week last year....meanwhile, our refineries' production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 30,000 barrels per day to 4,993,000 barrels per day, after that output had decreased by 20,000 barrels per day the prior week....however, the week's distillates production was still 4.5% lower than the 5,231,000 barrels of distillates per day that were being produced during the week ending November 10th 2017.... 

however, even with that big increase in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week still fell by 1,411,000 barrels to 226,610,000 barrels by November 9th, the 22nd decrease in the past 38 weeks, after our gasoline supplies had fallen by 8,151,000 barrels during the 4 ​full ​weeks of October....our gasoline supplies fell despite higher production because our imports of gasoline fell by 338,000 barrels per day to a 13 month low of 253,000 barrels per day, while our exports of gasoline rose by 46,000 barrels per day to 740,000 barrels per day, and because the amount of gasoline supplied to US markets rose by 93,000 barrels per day to 9,192,000 barrels per day...but even after falling most of the fall, our gasoline inventories are still at a seasonal high, 7.7% higher than last November 10th's level of 210,431,000 barrels, and roughly 8% above the 10 year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year...

meanwhile, with our distillates production little changed, our supplies of distillate fuels fell for the 8th week in a row, decreasing by 3,589,000 barrels to 119,268,000 barrels during the week ending November 9th, after our distillates supplies had fallen by 7,517,000 barrels over the prior two weeks...our distillates supplies fell again because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, a proxy for our domestic demand, increased by 315,000 barrels per day to 4,633,000 barrels per day, even as our exports of distillates fell by 128,000 barrels per day to 1,178,000 barrels per day, and as our imports of distillates rose by 139,000 barrels per day to 305,000 barrels per day....after this week's decrease, our distillate supplies ended the week 4.4% below the 124,763,000 barrels that we had stored on November 10th, 2017, and were nearly 10% below the 10 year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year...     

finally, with higher oil production and somewhat lower oil exports, our commercial supplies of crude oil increased for the 8th week in a row and for the 24th time in 2018, rising by 10,270,000 barrels during the week, from 431,787,000 barrels on November 2nd to 442,057,000 barrels on November 9th, the largest weekly increase since the week ending February 3rd 2017...that increase means that our crude oil inventories are now roughly 5% above the five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, and roughly 27% above the 10 year average of crude oil stocks for the second weekend in November, with the disparity between those figures arising because it wasn't until early 2015 that our oil inventories first rose above 400 million barrels...however, since our crude oil inventories had been falling through most of the past year and a half until just recently, our oil supplies as of November 9th were still 3.7% below the 458,997,000 barrels of oil we had stored on November 10th of 2017, 9.8% below the 490,284,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on November 11th of 2016, and 2.8% below the 455,074,000 barrels of oil we had in storage on November 13th of 2015...   

OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report

next we'll review OPEC's November Oil Market Report (covering October OPEC & global oil data), which was released on Tuesday of this past week, and​ which​ is available as a free download, and hence it's the report we check for monthly global oil supply and demand data...the first table from this monthly report that we'll look at is from the page numbered 59 of that report (pdf page 69), and it shows oil production in thousands of barrels per day for each of the current OPEC members over the recent years, quarters and months, as the column headings indicate...for all their official production measurements, OPEC uses an average of estimates from six "secondary sources", namely the International Energy Agency (IEA), the oil-pricing agencies Platts and Argus, ‎the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the oil consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) and the industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, as an impartial adjudicator as to whether their output quotas and production cuts are being met, to thus resolve any potential disputes that could arise if each member reported their own figures...

October 2018 OPEC crude output via secondary sources

as we can see on this table of official oil production data, OPEC's oil output increased by 127,000 barrels per day to 32,900,000 barrels per day in October, from their September production total of 32,773,000 barrels per day....however, that September figure was originally reported as 32,761,000 barrels per day, so OPEC's September output was therefore revised 12,000 barrels per day higher with this report (for your reference, here is the table of the official September OPEC output figures as reported a month ago, before this month's revisions)...as you can tell from the far right column above, increases of 142,000 barrels per day in the oil output from the United Arab Emirates, 127,000 barrels per day in the oil output from Saudi Arabia and 60,000 barrels per day in the oil output from Libya were the major reasons for this month's increase, more than offsetting the decrease of 156,000 barrels per day in Iranian output...however, excluding new member Congo, the September output of 32,576,000 barrels per day from the other OPEC members was still 164,000 barrels per day below the 32,730,000 barrels per day revised quota they agreed to at their November 2017 meeting, mostly due to the big drop in Venezuelan output, another OPEC country that has also been impacted by US sanctions...  

the next graphic we'll look at shows us both OPEC and global monthly oil production on the same graph​​, over the period from November 2016 to October 2018, and it's taken from the page numbered 60 (pdf page 70) of the November OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report...on this graph, the cerulean blue bars represent OPEC oil production in millions of barrels per day as shown on the left scale, while the purple graph represents global oil production in millions of barrels per day, with the millions of barrels per day of global output shown on the right scale...      

October 2018 OPEC report global oil supply

OPEC's preliminary estimate indicates that total global oil production rose by 440,000 barrels per day to a record high 99.76 million barrels per day in October, after September's total global output figure was revised up by 3​2​0,000 barrels per day from the 90.0 million barrels per day global oil output that was reported a month ago, as non-OPEC oil production rose by ​a rounded ​310,000 barrels per day in October after that revision, with increased US and Canadian output the major contributors to the non-OPEC increase....global oil output during October was also 3.05 million barrels per day, or 3.2% higher than the 96.71 million barrels of oil per day that were reportedly being produced globally in October a year ago (see the November 2017 OPEC report online (pdf) for the originally reported year ago details)...with the October increase in OPEC's output following the upward revision to their September output, their October oil production of 32,900,000 barrels per day represented 33.0% of what was produced globally during the month, same as their global share in September, which had originally been reported as a 33.1% share....OPEC's October 2017 production was reported at 32,589,000 barrels per day, which means that the 14 OPEC members who were part of OPEC last year, excluding new member Congo, are producing 13,000 fewer barrels per day of oil than they were producing a year ago, during the tenth month that their production quotas were in effect, with a 692,000 barrel per day decrease in output from Venezuela and a 527,000 barrel per day decrease in output from Iran from that time more than offsetting the production increases from the Saudis, the Emirates, Iraq and Libya...  

despite the 440,000 barrel per day increase in global oil output in October, increasing demand meant that we again saw a deficit in the amount of oil being produced globally during the month, as this next table from the OPEC report will show us...  

October 2018 OPEC report global oil demand

the table above comes from page 32 of the November OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (pdf page 42), and it shows regional and total oil demand in millions of barrels per day for 2017 in the first column, and OPEC's estimate of oil demand by region and globally quarterly over 2018 over the rest of the table...on the "Total world" line ​in the fifth column, we've circled in blue the figure that's relevant for October, which is their revised estimate of global oil demand during the fourth quarter of 2018...       

OPEC's estimate is that during the 4th quarter of this year, all oil consuming regions of the globe will be using 99.98 million barrels of oil per day, which was a downward revision by a 0.10 million barrels of oil per day from their prior oil consumption estimate for the quarter (see demand revisions circled in green above)....meanwhile, as OPEC showed us in the oil supply section of this report and the summary supply graph above, the world's oil producers were producing 99.76 million barrels per day during October, which means that there was a still a shortfall of around 220,000 barrels per day in global oil production vis-a vis the demand estimated for the month...    

meanwhile, a month ago we estimated a global shortfall of around 350,000 barrels per day in global oil production during September, based on figures published at that time...however, as we saw earlier, September's global output figure was revised up by 3​20,000 barrels per day from those figures...in addition, as we've circled in the green ellipse above, oil demand for the 3rd quarter was revised 3,000 barrels per day lower, so with those two revisions September's global output would have thus​ virtually matched demand​...that 30,000 barrels per day revision to third quarter demand also means that the global shortfall of 580,000 barrels per day that we had figured for August last month would thus be revised to 550,000 barrels per day, and that the 960,000 barrels per day shortfall we had figured for July would thus be reduced to 930,000 barrels per day....

in addition, last month we estimated there was a shortfall of around 50,000 barrels per day in global oil production vis-a vis the demand in June, a shortfall for May of 490,000 barrels per day, and a shortfall in April of 300,000 barrels per day... but as we see in the green ellipse above, oil demand for the 2nd quarter has been revised 120,000 barrels per day higher, so our revised global oil shortfalls for the 2nd quarter months will thus now be 170,000 barrels per day for June, 610,000 barrels per day for May, and 400,000 barrels per day for April...

since there was no revision to demand in the first quarter, our surplus figures of 20,000 barrels per day for March, 200,000 barrels per day for February, and 40,000 barrels per day for January remain as we figured them a month ago...so by totaling up these 10 monthly revised estimates of surplus or shortfall, we find that for the first ten months of 2018, global oil demand exceeded production by roughly 81,250,000 barrels, actually a comparatively small net oil shortfall that is the equivalent of roughly 19.5 hours of global oil production at the October production rate...

This Week's Rig Count

US drilling rig activity increased for the sixth time in 8 weeks during the week ending November 16th, albeit not by much, but enough to push the rig count to a new 44 month high....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs running in the US increased by 1 rig to 1082 rigs over the week ending on Friday, which was also 167 more rigs than the 915 rigs that were in use as of the November 17th report of 2017, but down from the shale era high of 1929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, the week before OPEC began their attempt to flood the global oil market...  

the count of rigs drilling for oil increased by 2 rigs to 888 rigs this week, which was 150 more oil rigs than were running a year ago, while it remained well below the recent high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10, 2014...at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations decreased by 1 to 194 rigs, which was still 17 more than the 177 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, but way down from the modern high of 1,606 natural gas rigs that were deployed on August 29th, 2008...

offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico increased by 1 rig to 22 rigs this week, which was also 1 more rig than the 21 Gulf of Mexico rigs active a year ago...with no other offshore US drilling being done elsewhere either this week or a year ago, those Gulf of Mexico totals are also equal to the national offshore rig count.... meanwhile, one of the platforms which had been drilling through inland waters in Louisiana was shut down this week, leaving two rigs active on inland waters, ​still ​up from the 1 inland water rig running a year ago

the count of active horizontal drilling rigs increased by 4 rigs to 939 horizontal rigs this week, which was also 163 more horizontal rigs than the 776 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on November 17th of last year, but down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014...on the other hand, the directional rig count decreased by 3 to 71 directional rigs this week, which was also down from the 76 directional rigs that were in use during the same week of last year....meanwhile, the vertical rig count was unchanged at 72 vertical rigs this week, which was still up from the 63 vertical rigs that were operating on November 17th of 2017...  

the details on this week's changes in drilling activity by state and by shale basin are included in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major producing states, and the second table shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of November 16th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week's count (November 9th) and this week's (November 16th) count, the third column shows last week's November 9th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and those running on the equivalent weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was on Friday the 17th of November, 2017...      

November 16 2018 rig count summary

the 3 rig increase in the Eagle Ford of south Texas indicated above included 2 rigs drilling for oil and one targeting natural gas, bringing the Eagle Ford deployment up to 70 oil rigs and 9 targeting gas; the rig that was shut down in the Dallas area Barnett shale had been targeting oil; a natural gas rig still remains active there...while there were 2 natural gas rigs added in the Pennsylvania Marcellus, two natural gas rigs were shut down in the Utica, one each in Pennsylvania and Ohio​; as a result, ​the Utica shale rig count is now at a 2 year low...the natural gas rig count was still down by one, however, because 2 gas rigs were idled in formations not tracked separately by Baker Hughes...note that in addition to the rig changes in the major producing states shown above, Illinois also saw a rig start up this week, the first drilling activity in that state since February 23rd of this year; a year ago, there was also one rig active in Illinois..

DUC well report for October

Wednesday of this past week saw the release of the EIA's Drilling Productivity Report for November, which includes the EIA's October data for drilled but uncompleted oil and gas wells in the 7 most productive shale regions...for the 25th consecutive month, this report again showed an increase in uncompleted wells nationally in ​October, as both drilling of new wells and completions of drilled wells increased, but the new drilling increased at a faster pace....like most previous months, this month's uncompleted well increase was mostly due to a big increase of newly drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) in the Permian basin of west Texas, with increases of uncompleted wells in the Anadarko basin of Oklahoma and the Eagle Ford of south Texas also contributing...for all 7 sedimentary regions covered by this report, the total count of DUC wells increased by 269, from 8,276 wells in September to 8,545 wells in October, again the highest number of such unfracked wells in the history of this report, and up 32.5% from the 6,329 wells that had been drilled but remained uncompleted in October a year ago...that was as 1,577 wells were drilled in the 7 regions that this report covers (representing 87% of all U.S. onshore drilling operations) during October, up from the 1,547 drilled in September, while 1,308 wells were completed and brought into production by fracking, a increase of 23 well completions over the 1285 completions seen in September...at the October completion rate, the 8,545 drilled but uncompleted wells left at the end of the month again represent a 6.5 month backlog of wells that have been drilled but not yet fracked...

as has been the case for most of the past two years, the October DUC well increases were predominantly oil wells, with most of those in the Permian basin...the Permian basin saw its total count of uncompleted wells rise by 249, from 3,617 DUC wells in September to 3,866 DUCs in October, as 684 new wells were drilled into the Permian​,​ but only 435 wells in the region were fracked...at the same time, DUC wells in the Anadarko basin region in & around Oklahoma rose by 41, from 1,043 DUC wells in September to 1,084 DUCs in October, as 206 wells were drilled in the Anadarko basin during October, while 165 Anadarko basin wells were completed...over the same period, the number of DUC wells in the Eagle Ford of south Texas increased by 25 to 1,546, as 210 wells were drilled into the Eagle Ford while 185 Eagle Ford wells were fracked....in addition, the natural gas producing Haynesville shale of the northern Louisiana-Texas border region saw their uncompleted well inventory increase by 7 wells to 203, as 60 wells were drilled into the Haynesville during October, while 53 Haynesville wells were fracked during the same period...

on the other hand, the drilled but uncompleted well count in the Appalachian region, which includes the Utica shale, fell by 19 wells, from 642 DUCs in September to 623 DUCs in October, as 119 wells were drilled into the Marcellus and Utica shales, while 138 of the already drilled wells in the region were fracked...in addition, the drilled but uncompleted well count in the Niobrara chalk of the Rockies' front range decreased by 14 wells to 401, as 178 Niobrara wells were drilled while 192 Niobrara wells were being fracked...lastly, DUC wells in the Bakken of North Dakota fell by 20, from 817 DUC wells in September to 797 DUCs in October, as 120 wells were drilled into the Bakken in October, while 140 of the drilled wells in that basin were completed....thus, for the month of October, DUCs in the 5 oil basins tracked by in this report (ie., the Anadarko, Bakken, Niobrara, Permian, and Eagle Ford) increased by a net of 281 wells to 7719 wells, while the uncompleted well count in the natural gas basins (the Marcellus, Utica, and the Haynesville) decreased by 12 wells to 826 wells, although as the report notes, once into production, more than half the wells drilled nationally will produce both oil and gas... 

+

note: there's more here...

Sunday, November 11, 2018

oil prices in a record losing streak; natural gas prices jump 13% on forecast cold; rig count at a 44 month high

oil prices were again lower every day this past week, ​& ​hence extend​ed the number of consecutive daily losses to ten, the longest streak of lower oil prices in records going back to November 1984...after falling daily last week to a 6.6% loss at $63.14 a barrel, contracts for December delivery of US crude oil initially moved 64 cents higher on Monday as US sanctions on Iran began, but then eased after the U.S. granted waivers to eight countries to continue buying Iranian crude and ended the day with a loss of 4 cents at $63.10 a barrel...oil prices continued falling on Tuesday, tumbling to as low as $61.31 a barrel on the Iran sanctions waivers, and then ending the day down 89 cents at $62.21 a barrel on worries that ​the global ​economic slowdown ​would reduce demand...oil prices then extended their losses ​on Wednesday, ​after the EIA reported a surprisingly large increase in US crude inventories as US oil production spiked to a record high, ​with WTI ​finishing down another 54 cents at $61.67 a barrel...US crude prices dropped for a ninth consecutive session on Thursday, falling into what traders consider a bear market, ending the day down a dollar at $61.67 a barrel, as traders seemed fixated on the new weekly record high in U.S. crude production cited by the EIA...U.S. crude prices fell then fell for a record 10th consecutive session on Friday, wiping out the contract's gains for the entire year and falling below $60 a barrel for the first time since February, before rallying at the close to end the day down 48 cents at $60.19 a barrel...US crude prices thus ended 4.7% lower for the week and are now down 21.2% from the 4-year high of $76.41 a barrel set on October 3rd, at which time contracts for November oil were being quoted..

since we now have a record setting series of decreases in oil prices on our hands, we'll include a graph of US oil prices over the past five months, so you can see what the past month's price drop looks like...

November 10 2018 daily oil prices

the above graph is an early Saturday afternoon screenshot of the interactive US oil price graph at Daily FX, an online platform that provides trading news, charts, indicators and analysis of the markets...each bar on the above graph represents oil prices for a day of oil trading between June 25, 2018 and Friday of this week, wherein the green bars represent the days when the price of oil went up, and red bars represent the days when the price of oil went down...for green bars, the starting oil price at the beginning of the day is at the bottom of the bar and the price at the end of the day is at the top of the bar, while for red or down days, the starting price is at the top of the bar and the price at the end of the day is at the bottom of the bar...also visible on this "candlestick" style graph are the faint grey "wicks" above and below each bar, to indicate trading prices during the day that were above or below the opening to closing price range for that day...outside of 4 days in February, oil prices are now at the lowest they've been all year....note that since this graph includes off market and after hours trading, the prices shown above do not correspond exactly to the NYMEX exchange prices we have been quoting.. 

meanwhile, natural gas prices for December delivery spiked by more than 13% this week to end at their highest level this year, largely on the Climate Prediction Center​'s​ forecasts for colder than normal temperatures over most of the country...the initial jump in prices came on Monday, when December natural gas contracts rose 28.3 cents or 8.6% to $3.567 per mmBTU, when the new 6 to 10 day outlook indicated temperatures much below normal for an area from Maine to the Dakotas and down to Texas...natural gas prices changed little over the next three days, ignoring a larger than expected storage increase, and then jumped another 17.6 cents to $3.719 per mmBTU on Friday, despite indications of a warming trend in the 3 to 4 week outlook...

since natural gas prices also made an unusual move to their high for this year, we'll include a graph of those here too...

November 10 2018 daily natural gas prices

like the oil graph above, this is a screenshot of the live interactive US natural gas price graph at Daily FX, covering natural gas prices daily between April 23rd, 2018 and Friday of this week, wherein the green bars represent the days when the price of oil went up, and red bars represent the days when the price of oil went down...you can clearly see that natural gas prices spiked much higher to begin this week, after first moving out of a narrow range ​generally below $3 per mmBTU ​at the beginning of October...we​ should men​tion that natural gas prices for January ​2018 ​saw a similar price spike last December, but by January the February contract was already trading lower, and the same could happen this year if the warmer than normal El Nino winter develops as forecast​ and fears of a shortage are alleviated​...

the natural gas storage report for the week ending November 2nd from the EIA indicated that natural gas in storage in the US rose by 65 billion cubic feet to 3,208 billion cubic feet during that week, which left our gas supplies 580 billion cubic feet, or 15.3% below the 3,788 billion cubic feet that were in storage on November 3rd of last year, and 621 billion cubic feet, or 16.2% below the five-year average of 3,829 billion cubic feet of natural gas that are typically in storage on the first weekend of November....this week's 65 billion cubic feet increase in natural gas supplies was more than the 55 billion cubic feet increase in stocks that was called for by a S&P Global Platts survey of analysts , and was also much above the average of 48 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been added to storage during the bridge week between October and November in recent years, but was still just the 6th average or below average inventory increase over the past eighteen weeks...natural gas storage facilities in the Midwest saw a 24 billion cubic feet increase over the week, which reduced their supply deficit to 10.3% below normal, but natural gas supplies in the East only increased by 5 billion cubic feet and their supply deficit ticked up to 9.6% below normal for this time of year...on the other hand, the South Central region saw a 30 billion cubic feet increase in their supplies, as their natural gas storage deficit decreased to 23.8% below their five-year average for the first weekend of November...meanwhile, the natural gas pipeline rupture in British Columbia has been repaired, but flows to the US remained limited, so only 2 billion cubic feet were added to supplies in the Mountain region, as their deficit from normal still fell to 16.9%, while the 3 billion cubic feet were added to gas in storage in the Pacific region also lowered their natural gas supply deficit to 24.5% below normal for this time of year....

The Latest US Oil Data from the EIA

this week's US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending November 2nd indicated a large upward adjustment to our crude oil production while most other crude supply and demand metrics were relatively little changed, and hence there was another addition to our commercial crude supplies for ​the seventh week in a row...our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 195,000 barrels per day to an average of 7,539,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 334,000 barrels per day the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 80,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,405,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 5,134,000 barrels of per day during the week ending November 2nd, 275,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus exports during the prior week...over the same period, field production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 400,000 barrels per day higher at 11,600,000 barrels per day, which means that our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from wells totaled an average of 16,734,000 barrels per day during this reporting week... 

meanwhile, US oil refineries were using 16,408,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 2nd, 9,000 barrels per day less than the amount of oil they used during the prior week, while over the same period a net of 793,000 barrels of oil per day were reportedly being added to the oil that's in storage in the US....hence, this week's crude oil figures from the EIA would seem to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 467,000 fewer barrels per day than what refineries reported they used during the week plus what oil was added to storage....to account for that disparity between the supply of oil and the consumption or new storage of it, the EIA inserted a (+467,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a fudge factor that is labeled in their footnotes as "unaccounted for crude oil"...again, with an "unaccounted for crude" figure that large, one or more of this week's oil metrics must still be off by a statistically significant amount (for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that "unaccounted for" oil, see this EIA explainer).... 

further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports rose to an average of 7,544,000 barrels per day, still 1.2% less than the 7,639,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year....the net 793,000 barrel per day increase in our total crude inventories included a 826,000 barrel per day increase in our commercially available stocks of crude oil, which was slightly offset by a 34,000 barrel per day decrease in the amount of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, likely part of a sale of 11 million barrels from those reserves to Exxon et al that closed two months ago....this week's crude oil production was reported up by 400,000 barrels per day to 11,600,000 barrels per day as a result of a rounded 400,000 barrels per day upward adjustment to 11,100,000 barrels per day output from wells in the lower 48 states in light of last week's confirmed production figures, while oil output from Alaska remained at 488,000 barrels per day​, giving us a rounded total of 11,600,000 barrel per day​...last year's US crude oil production for the week ending November 3rd was at 9,620,000 barrels per day, so this week's rounded oil production figure was 20.6% above that of a year ago, and 37.6% more than the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production fell to during the last week of June of 2016...

meanwhile, US oil refineries were operating at 90.0% of their capacity in using 16,408,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending November 2nd, up from 89.4% of capacity the prior week, but still a normal utilization rate for the end of the fall refinery maintenance season....the 16,408,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were once again at a seasonal high, for the 21st out of the past 23 weeks, but only fractionally higher than the 16,305,000 barrels of crude per day that were processed during the week ending November 3rd, 2017, when US refineries were operating at 89.6% of capacity...

even with  little change​ in ​the amount of oil being refined this week, gasoline output from our refineries was quite a bit lower, decreasing by 650,000 barrels per day to 9,714,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 2nd, after our refineries' gasoline output had increased by 336,000 barrels per day during the week ending October 26th...as a result of that drop in our gasoline output, our gasoline production during the week was 4.5% lower than the 10,167,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily during the same week last year...meanwhile, our refineries' production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) decreased by 20,000 barrels per day to 4,963,000 barrels per day, after that output had increased by 23,000 barrels per day the prior week....and like gasoline, this week's distillates production was also 4.5% lower than the 5,199,000 barrels of distillates per day that were being produced during the week ending October 27th 2017.... 

however, even with that big drop in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week still rose by 1,852,000 barrels to 228,021,000 barrels by November 2nd, the 16th increase in the past 37 weeks, after our gasoline supplies had fallen by 7,987,000 barrels over the prior two weeks....our gasoline supplies rose despite lower production because our imports of gasoline rose by 228,000 barrels per day to 591,000 barrels per day, while our exports of gasoline fell by 318,000 barrels per day to 694,000 barrels per day, and because the amount of gasoline supplied to US markets fell by 163,000 barrels per day to 9,099,000 barrels per day...so even after falling most of the fall, our gasoline inventories are still at a seasonal high, 8.8% higher than last November 3rd's level of 209,537,000 barrels, and roughly 8.6% above the 10 year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year...

meanwhile, with our distillates production little changed, our supplies of distillate fuels fell for the 7th week in a row, decreasing by 3,465,000 barrels to 122,857,000 barrels during the week ending November 2nd, after our distillates suppliies had fallen by 4,052,000 barrels the prior week...our distillates supplies fell even as the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, a proxy for our domestic demand, decreased by 108,000 barrels per day to 4,318,000 barrels per day, while our exports of distillates rose by 29,000 barrels per day to 1,306,000 barrels per day, and while our imports of distillates rose by 25,000 barrels per day to 166,000 barrels per day....after this week's decrease, our distillate supplies ended the week 2.2% below the 125,562,000 barrels that we had stored on November 3rd, 2017, and fell to roughly 8.5% below the 10 year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year...     

finally, with higher oil production and somewhat higher oil imports, our commercial supplies of crude oil increased for the 7th week in a row and for the 23rd time in 2018, rising by 5,783,000 barrels during the week, from 426,004,000 barrels on October 26th to 431,787,000 barrels on November 2nd...that increase means that our crude oil inventories continue to be more than 3% above the five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, and roughly 23.4% above the 10 year average of crude oil stocks for the first weekend in November, with the disparity between those figures arising because it wasn't until early 2015 that our oil inventories first rose above 400 million barrels...however, since our crude oil inventories had been falling through most of the past year and a half until just recently, our oil supplies as of November 2nd were still 5.5% below the 457,143,000 barrels of oil we had stored on November 3rd of 2017, 11.0% below the 485,010,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on November 4th of 2016, and 5.1% below the 454,822,000 barrels of oil we had in storage on November 6th of 2015...       

This Week's Rig Count

US drilling rig activity increased for the fifth time in 7 weeks during the week ending November 7th, and thereby pushed to a 44 month high....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs running in the US increased by 14 rigs to 1081 rigs over the week ending on Friday, which was also 174 more rigs than the 907 rigs that were in use as of the November 10th report of 2017, but down from the shale era high of 1929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, the week before OPEC began their attempt to flood the global oil market...  

the count of rigs drilling for oil increased by 12 rig​s​ to 886 rigs this week, which was the largest weekly rise in the oil rig count since May and 148 more oil rigs than were running a year ago, while it remained well below the recent high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10, 2014...at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations increased by 2 to 195 rigs, which was also 26 more than the 169 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, but way down from the modern high of 1,606 natural gas rigs that were deployed on August 29th, 2008...

offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico increased by 3 rigs to 21 rigs this week, which was also 3 rigs more than the 18 Gulf of Mexico rigs active a year ago​; since there is now no other offshore drilling elsewhere, this week's Gulf of Mexico totals are equal to the national offshore rig count​....​ ​meanwhile, the count of active horizontal drilling rigs increased by 6 rigs to 935 horizontal rigs this week, which was also 159 more horizontal rigs than the 776 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on November 10th of last year, but down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014...at the same time, the directional rig count increased by 1 to 74 directional rigs this week, which is the same number of directional rigs that were in use during the same week of last year....in addition, the vertical rig count was up by 7 rigs to 72 vertical rigs this week, which was also up from the 57 vertical rigs that were operating on November 10th of 2017...  

the details on this week's changes in drilling activity by state and by shale basin are included in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major producing states, and the second table shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of November 9th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week's count (November 2nd) and this week's (November 9th) count, the third column shows last week's November 2nd active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and those running on the equivalent weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was on Friday the 10th of November, 2017...     

November 9 2018 rig count summary

you might notice that the basin count does not add up to the 6 horizontal rig count that we​ just​ reported, and you might also notice a nine rig decrease in Oklahoma's Cana Woodford that appears to coincide with and contradict ​the 4 rig increase in Oklahoma's count...i don't have an explanation for that, but i would speculate that it's possible that a number of the rigs that were previously indicated as targeting the Cana Woodford might have been reclassified to another Anadarko basin which Baker Hughes doesn't list...the national totals in the basin by basin spreadsheet add up, because they show an increase of 15 oil rigs and 2 natural gas rigs in "other basins" not tracked separately by Baker Hughes, so for some reason around a dozen rigs that might have previously been included in the Cana Woodford were shifted to that catch all "other" category...elsewhere, the Permian basin shows a 5 rig increase because there was a net increase of one rig in the Texas basins (+3 in the Delaware and -2 in the Midland) and an increase of 4​ rigs​ in Delaware on the New Mexico side of the state line...as we noted, the natural gas rig increase can be accounted for by the 2 rig increase in the "other basins" category, as the two natural rigs that were added in Pennsylvania's Marcellus were offset by natural gas rigs that were shut down in Ohio's Utica and the Eagle Ford of south Texas, which also dropped two oil rigs and now shows a deployment of 68 oil rigs and 8 natural gas rigs....

+

+

note: there's more here