US Crude Oil Exports Reach 3-Million-Bbls Per Day -- July 9, 2018

Nomination: in prime time announcement, President Trump will name his pick for the Supreme Court, tonight, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Connecticut natural gas power: 805-MW CPV Towantic Energy Center goes on line last month. Apparently the CPV natural gas plant in New York State -- near completion -- is still being held up by faux environmentalists and Governor Cuomo, here and here.


Chevron: set to put up many of its North Sea oil and gas assets for sale, in a bid to streamline portfolio. The assets it intends to offload include Britannia and its satellites, along with Alba, Alder, Captain, Elgin/Franklin and Erskine fields. The move is part of Chevron's strategic review of global portfolio to determine the competitiveness of all its projects. 

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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off confidential list over the weekend/today:

Monday, July 9, 2018:
34071, 1,950, Hess, AN-Double Bar V-152-95-0106H-2, Antelope, Sanish; will be a huge well; 11 days from spud to TD;; t5/18; cum 25K after 20 days;

Sunday, July 8, 2018:
33370, 1,800, Statoil, Abe 30-31 4H, Painted Woods, an average Bakken well (these days), 41 stages; 8.4 million lbs, medium, mesh, t1/18; cum 39K 5/18;

Saturday, July 7, 2018:
None.

Active rigs:

$73.69→	7/9/2018	07/09/2017	07/09/2016	07/09/2015	07/09/2014
Active Rigs	64	56	29	74	189

RBN Energy: plans afoot to load crude onto VLCCs at more Gulf Coast ports.

For the first time ever, U.S. crude oil exports have hit the 3 MMb/d mark — a once-unthinkable pace equivalent to sending out 10 fully loaded Very Large Crude Carriers a week.

VLCCs, with their 2-MMbbl capacity and rock-bottom per-bbl delivery costs, are the most cost-effective way to transport crude to distant markets like China and India. But there’s still only one terminal on the Gulf Coast that can fill a VLCC to the brim — the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port — and pipeline connections from key Texas and Oklahoma plays to LOOP are limited. Elsewhere along the coast, VLCCs need to be loaded in offshore deep water by reverse lightering from smaller vessels — a slower and more costly loading process. Change is a-comin’, though. Companies are testing the docking and partial loading of VLCCs at terminals along the Texas coast, and plans for a number of greenfield facilities capable of partially — or even fully — loading the gargantuan vessels at the dock are being considered. Today, we review the latest efforts to streamline the loading of VLCCs and what they mean for crude-export economics.

As we said in our last look at VLCCs, the use of the supertankers during the U.S.’s 40-year ban on most crude exports was largely limited to imports to LOOP, occasional shipments out of the Valdez Marine Terminal in Valdez, AK (the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System) and into Andeavor’s Berth 121 in Long Beach, CA — the two other U.S. facilities designed to handle VLCCs. Since the export ban was lifted in December 2015, though, crude exports — and interest in using VLCCs for exports out of the Gulf Coast — have been on the upswing. Figure 1 shows that in 2015, the last year the ban was in place, exports (almost all of them to Canada) averaged 465 Mb/d, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Exports rose 27% (to just about 590 Mb/d) in 2016, then almost doubled in 2017 (to more than 1.1 MMb/d).