Graphics Worth A Thousand Words; About That OPEC Cut (Wink, Wink) -- October 2, 2017

Pardon The Interruption 

By the way, pardon the interruption, before you do anything else, look at the amount of crude oil the us imported from OPEC from February, 2017, to the most recent reporting period, July, 2017, on a monthly basis (and then get back to me regarding the OPEC cuts [wink, wink]).

Now, back to the original post.

For the archives: WTI is down over 2% today; trading at about $50.57.

I posted these two links over the weekend. I never got around to reading them; something tells me they are incredibly timely articles in light of all the data on this page.

• Saudis pay the price for OPEC leadership, Bloomberg. 
• Saudi Arabia is ceding oil market share to support prices and that's good for US oil plays, Forbes. 

And one more thing, CNBC is reporting that OPEC production for the month of September, 2017, increased by 50,000 bopd:

• trivial in the big scheme of things;
• but, going in the wrong direction; and,
• mostly due to continued increase in Iraqi production

The tea leaves are not hard to read.  

Original Post

This is simply remarkable.

It took a year but Saudi Arabian crude oil imports into the US have finally ... fallen off the chart. This is amazing -- there were reports in the mainstream media that this had occurred but I do not recall any stories suggesting it was this "bad" for the kingdom. I do not recall CNBC talking about this. With Saudi Arabian crude oil imports falling off the chart, the price of oil should be surging, shouldn't it? It's not. In early trading oil was down over 1.2% and WTI was trending toward $50 again.

So, the graphics, from this source, in thousands of bbls / DAY:

The graph:

Look at Saudi cash reserves as of July, 2017.

Now, look at the most recent data, just released:

Meanwhile, crude oil imported to the US from Iraq is surging. The graph below is in thousand bbs/month (the Saudi graph above is thousand bbls/day):

How do the various OPEC countries compare? This is bbls/month for the OPEC countries over the past few months:

Look at US monthly import, comparing Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Venezuela. Over the six-month period shown:

• Venezuela: volatile, but basically the same
• Saudi Arabia: significant decrease
• Iraq: has more than doubled in the past six months

For Saudi Arabia vs Iraq: this is not trivial.