Oil Pricing -- Where We Stand -- April 19, 2017

Re-posted from earlier, today's crude oil / gasoline data from the EIA:

Re-Balancing: US crude oil inventories down one million bbls. At this rate, only 150 more days to get us to "normal" -- 250 million bbls in US storage. The link will take you to a pdf.

US refining as gasoline prices start increase significantly: US refiners are at 93% operable capacity; they increased throughput by about 240,000 bbls/day, but evenso, gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.8 million bbls/day. Imports of crude oil decreased by a miserable 68,000 bopd (trivial), averaging over 7.8 million bopd. Over the past four weeks, US crude oil imports have actually increased 2% over the same same four-week period one year ago. 

In other words, no real change, and still remarkable how much oil the US still imports. 

Saudi Arabia says it "needs" $60-oil (average) for the entire year, 2017. This is where we stand to get to that $60-average. The first three months are completed; April - December are estimates of numbers that would be needed to get us to $60 oil. We have to have steady trend to $70 by end of year, and have to hit $70 by November. The numbers are simply my ballpark estimates of the average price of WTI in any given month. Brent is currently trending a bit higher than WTI. Saudi has its own pricing.

	Scenario One
January	50
February	50
March	52
April	54
May	55
June	60
July	60
August	65
September	65
October	65
November	70
December	70
2017 Average	60

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Flashback

Vern Whitten sent link to his 1997 photos of the massive Red River flood. Link here. In the notes that accompanied his e-mail:

Photo notes:  20 years ago we used a medium format film camera to take these

photos. It was 10 shots then reload in the airplane. We then made contact sheets

in the darkroom, and scanned each negative before printing.  Now, we have a digital

camera that can over 400 high resolution photos before putting in a new chip.
Be sure to send Mr Whitten a big "thank you" for posting his photos/his links. He would love to hear from you.

Vern Whitten Photography
 www.vernwhittenphotography.com
 (701) 261-7658

It's impossible for me to "fathom" this degree of flooding. All the photos are amazing, but the first two literally take one's breath away. And it's not like this water receded in a day or two; this went on for weeks.