Morning Note -- October 22, 2018 -- Gulf Coast Crude Oil Exports Now Averaging Nearly Two Million BOPD

Honduran horde: up to 7, 000 and growing. Trump has many options. Better use them. Tweets make him look helpless / hopeless. Telling Congress to "change laws" is not the short-term answer. But great optics leading into the mid-terms. [Update, 9:15 a.m. CDT, if this is the best he can do, the hordes will win -- presidential tweet -- President Trump on Monday said that the U.S. will begin to cut off or reduce aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as citizens of those countries flee for the U.S. as part of a so-called "caravan" of migrants. The horse is out of the barn for these countries. The problem now lies with Mexico for not controlling their own borders. My hunch: if Trump has not defused this by the end of the week, he will lose his base going into the mid-terms.]

Tass, from Saudi oil minister --

• Saudi oil production to rise to near 11 million bopd from 10.7 million bopd
• Saudi cannot guarantee prices won't go above $100 / bbl
• Saudi actions must be appreciated and supported (weird)
• no intention to use oil weapon over Khashoggie affair

Others:

• Saudi Arabia and Russia's oil output is now near their highest levels ever
• the two countries have no spare capacity to pump more
• Saudi Arabia with 1.3 million bopd spare capacity
• UAE: 200K bopd spare capacity
• folks are using dart boards to come up with soundbites 

NFL kneeling:
apparently a problem over the weekend
wait until players start kneeling "during" the game -- it's gonna happen 

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Wells Coming Off Confidential List

The WPX Behr wells are tracked here.

Monday, October 22, 2018:
34668, SI/NC, MRO, Drake 44-16H, Jim Creek, no production data,
34074, SI/NC XTO, Ravin 21X-15F, Siverston, no production data,

Sunday, October 21, 2018:
34687, SI/NC, XTO, FBIR Yellowwolf 31X-10DXA, Heart Butte, no production data,
34220, SI/NC, Hess, RS-Howell-LW-156-91-1107H-2, Ross, no production data,
34075, SI/NC, XTO, Ravin 21X-15B, Siverston, no production data,
30824, 2,649, WPX, Behr 19-18H1, Reunion Bay, t7/18; cum 102K 8/18; 41 stages; 6 million lbs, huge well, 100K in less than 2 months:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
8-2018	43958	28140
7-2018	57765	10089

Saturday, October 20, 2018:
34688, SI/NC, XTO, FBIR Yellowwolf 31X-10G, Heart Butte, no production data,
34219, SI/NC, Hess, RS-Howell-LW-156-91-1107H-2, Ross, no production data,
34076, SI/NC, XTO, Ravin 21X-15EXF, Siverston, no production data,
33557, 2,103, CLR, Mountain Gap 3-10H, Rattlesnake Point, 64 stages; 15.3 million lbs, t7/18; cum 79K in two months;

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
8-2018	44888	48687
7-2018	32184	21497
4-2018	1722	0

31859, 2,776, WPX, Behr 19-18HUL, Reunion Bay, Three Forks, 50 stages; 8.4 million lbs, t7/18; cum 101K 8/18;, huge well, 100K in less than 2 months:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
8-2018	45259	26805
7-2018	55212	1018

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More Bakken

Active rigs:

$69.34→	10/22/2018	10/22/2017	10/22/2016	10/22/2015	10/22/2014
Active Rigs	71	54	34	69	192

RBN Energy: will the Swordfish Project give LOOP a leg up in crude oil exports?

Time and again, the repurposing of existing assets like pipelines and marine terminals to meet changing market needs has proven to be a winning approach. After all, if a lot of what you need is “already there” — as we said in today’s song title — why build something entirely new?

That use-what-you’ve-got tack is a key driver behind MPLX and Crimson Midstream’s recently unveiled Swordfish Pipeline project, which by early 2020 would enable large volumes of crude oil to flow south from the St. James, LA, market hub to the Clovelly storage hub — a key crude distributor to area refineries and the jumping-off point for crude exports on fully loaded VLCCs via the LOOP.

The companies also envision using other existing pipelines — including a possibly reversed Capline — as well as the soon-to-be-finished Bayou Bridge Pipeline to feed crude into Swordfish. Today, we review the MPLX/Crimson plan and assess how it might boost the export cred of LOOP, which is currently the only Gulf Coast port that can fill a 2-MMbbl VLCC to the brim without reverse lightering.

It’s hard not to talk about U.S. crude oil exports these days. Spurred on by WTI prices north of $70/bbl (and Brent prices about $10/bbl higher), U.S. producers continue to ramp up their output, some even in the face of regional takeaway constraints and wide price differentials.

And, with U.S. refineries taking about as much domestically produced crude as they can handle, exporting is pretty much the only option for incremental barrels being produced in the Permian, Eagle Ford, SCOOP/STACK and other major U.S. plays.

Exports out of the Gulf Coast totaled about 21.2 MMbbl in the first 11 days of October — an average of more than 1.9 MMb/d, with about 670 Mb/d being sent out from the Houston area, 655 Mb/d from Corpus Christi, 390 Mb/d from Beaumont and 180 Mb/d from Louisiana.

That 1.9 MMb/d is up from the January-through-September (2018) average of 1.6 MMb/d in 2017 and the 2016 average of only 590 Mb/d.