The Data Suggests The US Has Been Producing In Excess Of 12 Million BOPD For The Past Two Months -- November 15, 2018

Because the blog has so many posts each day, it's easy for some great reader comments to get buried; missed by others.

Go to this post from earlier today, and note this comment from a reader:

November 15, 2018: see first comment ... really, really interesting, especially the "crude oil" observation:

That's the last gas injection; Kemp's graphs show heating demand closer to mid-December norms ...

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/7/1949/1948/US%20NATURAL%20GAS%20SELECTED%20INDICATORS.pdf

The unexpectedly high crude inventories have been telling me that [US crude oil] production has been under reported; line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet (unaccounted for crude) has been averaging north of 500,000 bpd for two months: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/pdf/table1.pdf 

Production + imports - exports should equal oil refined + oil stored.

My guess is that US production has been running over 12 million bopd at least a couple weeks now.

If in fact, the US is able to consistently produce in excess of 12 million bopd -- that's quite remarkable. Especially if one notes that:

• the number of rigs is well down from what it could be
• the Permian is nowhere near its potential; the Permian is in its very, very early stages
• interesting things are going on in the Bakken
• much, much better wells
• newly fracked wells are positively affecting existing, producing wells
• most shale fields are constrained by takeaway capacity and/or other issues
• it seems US shale operators are barely breaking a sweat