US Crude Oil Production To Grow About 1 Million BOPD Through 2024; 60% Of That Growth From The Permian -- January 9, 2019

Divorce: it appears Mrs Jeff Bezos wants to monetize her marriage.

Peak oil? Hardly. Saudi Arabia revises up its reserves estimate to 268.5 billion bbls. Previously: 268 billion bbls. LOL. An increase of 0.5 billion bbls = 0.19% increase. There's a little confusion there: Saudi Arabia state figures say that the previous estimate was 266 billion bbls although wiki has had it at 268 billion bbls for quite time time. If 2.5 increase, then 2.5/266 = 0.9%. The precision seems a bit ludicrous. Venezuela? 2011 estimate of 297 billion bbls. Back to Saudi Arabia: at 30 million bopd, 270 billion bbls will last 24 years. Having said that, Saudi Arabia reserves estimates have never dropped in the last 50 years?

China-US trade talks, extended a third day, have ended. Positive message to be released tomorrow, Thursday, January 10, 2019.

LOOP: I think one could devote an entire blog to the LOOP. See below. 

Site added to the sidebar at the right: powerline. 

Price hike: in the local area, north Texas, overnight, regular unleaded jumped by about 20 cents/gallon, now around $1.99 / gallon to $2.09 / gallon. Was about $1.79 until the jump.

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Back to the Bakken

Only one well coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, January 9, 2018:

• 26348, 492, NP Resources, DeMores Federal 21-11PH, Three Forks, 24 stages; 4.5 million lbs, DeMores; t7/18; cum 33K 11/18;

Active rigs:

$50.81	1/9/2019	01/09/2018	01/09/2017	01/09/2016	01/09/2015
Active Rigs	63	53	37	58	167

RBN Energy: suddenly, a slew of gulf coast loadings onto VLCCs.

In 2018, a handful of midstream companies started racing to develop deepwater export terminals along the Gulf Coast that can fully load Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) with 2 MMbbl of crude oil from the Permian and other plays. While some of those companies are moving toward final investment decisions (FIDs) that would bring their plans to fruition in the early 2020s, terminal operators with existing VLCC-capable assets — both onshore and offshore — turned up the volume in a major way in December.

Today, we outline the strides made in recent days by the export programs of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), Seaway Texas City and Moda Midstream.The U.S. is now the largest oil-producing country in the world — recently surpassing both Russia and Saudi Arabia — with output at 11.7 MMb/d per the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ended December 28 (2018) and averaging 10.8 MMb/d for the full year. Additionally, RBN’s mid-case scenario forecasts that volume will grow by about 900 Mb/d each year to 16.2 MMb/d by 2024, with 60% of that growth coming from the Permian. Figure 1 below shows our latest view of where U.S. crude production is headed.

Amad: yesterday it was the Amad that had departed the LOOP. The Amad, now just north of Cuba, can be tracked here. Bound for KR YOS -- Port of Yeosu, Korea. ETA: February 26, 2019.

LOOP: from the linked RBN Energy note above --

In today’s market, there’s only one existing terminal that can fully load a VLCC in one fell swoop — that’s the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, off Port Fourchon, LA. In February 2018 LOOP kicked off its export program, loading an entire supertanker for shipment to China. They did it again in March, and then sent out one a month from June through September. The exports out of LOOP quieted for a few months as the facility worked on expanding its capacity to load tankers at a faster rate.

When December rolled around, LOOP showed off its new upgrades to the market by loading three supertankers — about 6 MMbbl of crude in total — in a matter of only seven days. That’s impressive — it had never been done before — but companies like Enterprise Products Partners have indicated that their planned offshore terminals will be capable of more than doubling that pace — to as many as  seven supertankers in a week’s time.

While LOOP remains way ahead of the curve in terms of its VLCC-loading capabilities, the folks at LOOP weren’t the only ones making a splash last month. The export hub in Ingleside, TX, located in the northeast corner of the Port of Corpus Christi, has made a lot of headlines over the last couple of years. In May 2017, when the property was still owned by Occidental Petroleum and dubbed the Oxy Ingleside Energy Center (OIEC), Oxy and the port held a very public ceremony as the VLCC Anne was brought to the dock to test if it would even be possible to partially load crude onto a VLCC from OIEC someday (see photo below.) The experiment confirmed that, yes, it could get done, with a few relatively minor modifications. In August 2018, Oxy announced a deal to sell the terminal to Moda Midstream, and in December 2018, Moda completed the improvements needed to partially load VLCCs at the hub and got to work.