Quiet Day -- December 5, 2018

China: link here. 

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Back to the Bakken

No wells coming off confidential list today.

Active rigs:

$53.23	12/5/2018	12/05/2017	12/05/2016	12/05/2015	12/05/2014
Active Rigs	64	53	39	64	188

RBN Energy: IMO 2020' market impacts and challenges to refiners.

The planned shift from 3.5%-sulfur marine fuel to fuel with sulfur content of 0.5% or less mandated by IMO 2020 on January 1, 2020, will require a combination of fuel-oil blending, crude-slate changes, refinery upgrades and, potentially, increased refinery runs, not to mention ship-mounted “scrubbers” for those who want to continue burning higher-sulfur bunker. That’s a lot of stars to align, and even then, there’s likely to be at least some degree of non-compliance, at least for a while. So, what’s ahead for global crude oil and bunker-fuel markets — and for refiners in the U.S. and elsewhere — in the coming months? Today, we continue our analysis of how sharply rising demand for low-sulfur marine fuel might affect crude flows, crude slates and a whole lot more.

For the past few years, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has been ratcheting down allowable sulfur-oxide emissions from the engines that power the 50,000-plus tankers, dry bulkers, container ships and other commercial vessels plying international waters.

The global cap on sulfur content in bunker (marine fuel) was reduced to 3.5% (from the old 4.5%), and 13 months from now — on New Year’s Day in 2020 — the cap is set to be reduced to a much stiffer 0.5%. There is an even tougher 0.1%-sulfur limit already in place in the IMO’s Emission Control Areas (ECAs) for sulfur, which include Europe’s Baltic and North seas and areas within 200 nautical miles of the U.S. and Canadian coasts. (Bunker fuel demand for these ECAs comprises 10-15% of total petroleum-derived bunker fuels.) That standard will remain in force within the ECAs when the 0.5% sulfur cap for the rest of the world becomes effective 13 months from now.