What The NDIC Map Of 44 Active Wells Looks Like In North Dakota -- February 3, 2016; VENEZUELA CRUDE OUTPUT FALLS SHORT, FORCES IT TO IMPORT OIL

What the NDIC GIS map of 44 active wells looks like:

• Link here. This link takes you to a series of graphics.

• The timeline, without graphics, is here.

Venezuela

Updates

The lights go out in Venezuela:

Venezuelans are accustomed to severe shortages of cooking oil, diapers and other staple products. But those hoping to buy what they could find got a new unpleasant surprise this week.

They found malls dark and shuttered under a government electricity rationing regime.

"This is madness, this is not the solution!" said Nataly Orta, 48, at the locked gate of the Lider mall in eastern Caracas.

"It's a drastic measure that will only create more unemployment and worsen an economy already in crisis."

Authorities ordered more than 250 shopping centers to find other sources of power from 1:00 to 3:00 pm and again from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, for the next three months.

A business association then said on Saturday the authorities had agreed to relax that requirement by supplying some stores with power in return for them reducing their opening hours.

Unable to generate their own electricity, most malls had been shutting their doors during those early afternoon and evening time slots.

Original Post

 

Tweeting now:  First US Gulf Coast WTI crude oil cargo delivered to Curacao (VENEZUELA) at NYMEX WTI plus $3.96/bbl. Platts story here. It is a very long and important story. It includes the following:

VENEZUELA CRUDE OUTPUT FALLS SHORT, FORCES IT TO IMPORT OIL

Venezuela has fallen short of the type of crude needed to meet the needs of its refineries for some time now and importing this cargo to the Isla refinery highlights that issue.

The Isla refinery has a capacity of 335,000 b/d. PDVSA has operated the Isla refinery, located 283 km north of the Venezuelan coast, since 1985 under a lease contract between the Venezuelan and Curacao governments. The lease has been renewed several times. The industrial services plant, called Curacao Refinery Utilities, is the property of the Curacao government.

In August, PDVSA made a decision to reactivate the lubricants complex at Isla. The complex's operations had been halted since early 2013 due to a lack of crude from Venezuela. It consists of four units: 4,200 mt/day high vacuum unit; a 1,000 mt/day propane de-asphalting unit; a 1,900 mt/day furfural extraction unit; and a 1,300 mt/day methyl ethyl ketone dewaxing unit.

Towards the end of 2015, PDVSA said Russia's Rosneft would provide Urals crude for use in the manufacturing of lubricants at Isla. That contract was for the purchase of 35,000-45,000 b/d of Urals blend, Jesus Luongo, PDVSA's vice president of refining, trade and supply, said in a statement at that time. In the previous three months, PDVSA had used an average 8,000 b/d of Urals crude, he said.

The purchase of crude from Russia, and now from the US, is necessary because Venezuelan production of this sort of crude is not sufficient to supply the Curacaoan refinery's process train, Luongo said then.

This is an incredibly important story for many reasons. One of the story lines has to do with "the type of oil." Regular readers are very, very aware of the issue of "the right type of oil." Bakken and west Texas oil are the "gold standards" for global oil: low sulfur and requiring little refining. (Note: sulfur-oil is required in some refining.)

It is interesting this story just appeared. Moments earlier I had received another story on how soon Venezuela might collapse but chose not to highlight it as a stand-alone post (maybe I should have) but simply updated the global wrap at this post.

I remember the days -- it was not too long ago -- that Venezuela was giving away its oil to residents in New England, United States.