"Energy Week" In DC - Harold Hamm Expands NG Deal With SK; Lithuania: Helping To Make The US Great Again; The Energy Page, Continued -- T+159 -- June 28, 2017

Over at "The Big Stories," I have a link to "LNG Exports." The first post was dated October 4, 2015. We all expected the LNG story to be a big story, but I think it is growing much faster than anyone expected. And here's another story, showing just how far-reaching Cheniere Energy is. From Zacks:

• new deal linked between Cheniere Energy and Lithuania
• another effort to reduce dependence on Russian energy giant Gazprom
• Lithuania is recommending neighboring countries to do the same
• Lithuania created a floating LNG terminal along the Baltic Sea coast in 2014
• also imports natural gas from Norway's Statoil
• this is the first LNG deal that Lithuania has signed with the US
• this will help propel the US to become the world's largest LNG supplier by 2035, leapfrogging both Australia (problems of its own) and Qatar (even bigger problems)
• and, The New York Times might note: the LNG to Lithuania does not have to go through the Panama Canal

Later, CLR / Harold Hamm will expand deal with South Korea for natural gas.

Under the backdrop of "Energy Week" in Washington, Continental Resources and SK E&S of South Korea announced they will sign a memorandum of understanding Wednesday which expands their existing joint development agreement to consider pursuing other opportunities with US shale plays, including the development and exporting of liquid natural gas. 

**************************

The Graphic Page

The fossil fuel statistics are simply staggering. Again, look at these figures just released today:

But note this: OPEC (and others) keep talking about the 5-year average. The 5-year average is no longer "valid" after the two-year Saudi surge, 2014 - 2016 and similar surge in US shale. One needs to use the 10-year average which I have mentioned many, many times. I see that John Kemp also uses the ten-year average -- at least in this tweet.

And look at that 10-year comparison: US distillate fuel oil stocks are up over 23 million bbls. That is simply staggering. The number is so staggering, the 10-year average cannot even be placed on the graph above.

US gasoline inventories: the same holds true for gasoline (compare the next chart with the chart above -- see if you can spot any differences -- I could not):

US crude oil: and to complete the picture, the US crude oil inventories graphic -- third verse, same as the first:

Henry The 8th, I Am, Herman's Hermits
Glut: reported earlier but with sketchy data. The data and associated analyses are now coming in and things don't look good. From Oil & Gas Journal, regarding US crude oil inventories:

• EIA: the increase was only 100,000 bbls
• API: the increase was actually 800,000 bbls (in my earlier post, I used the 851,000-bbl figure intially reported; when I get time, I have corrected it to the new EIA number)
• EIA: US crude oil inventories stand at 509.2  -- upper half of the average range for this time of year
• EIA: total motor gasoline fell 900,000 bbls last week but inventories still remain above the upper limit of the average range