WTI Closes Below $62 -- BR With Four New Bakken Permits -- May 2, 2019

Updates

May 3, 2019: for fans of Alex Trabek (?), see first comment -- English equivalent of "schadenfreude" = epicaricacy.

Original Post

WTI: gee, weren't we just talking about $80-oil last month, maybe two weeks ago. Today, WTI closed down 3%; lost almost $2.00/bbl, closing at $61.64. 

WTI did fall below $61 during Thursday trading according to Rigzone.

News? I didn't watch the news today. I suppose the drop in the price of WTI could be due to the huge build in US crude oil inventories, but having said that, with all the geopolitcal news it's hard to understand why WTI dropped this much. Not knowing anything in the news it just validates how irrelevant OPEC has become, and how big the US shale revolution is. It's also possible, those Iranian sanctions were again "watered down." Let's check twitter:

• crudehead: "the EIA's supply adjustment is indeed the devil you know" -- linking an HFI Research report

Bad news for:

• most Permian players
• all Permian players who got in late/overpaid
• OPEC
• Saudi Arabia
• Russia

Gasoline demand: most recent data not particularly reassuring:

 

*******************************

Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

	5/2/2019	05/02/2018	05/02/2017	05/02/2016	05/02/2015
Active Rigs	63	60	49	29	86

Four new permits:

• Operator: BR
• Field: Elidah (McKenzie)
• Comments: BR has four permits for a Sandie/Shafer pad in section 28-151-97 in Elidah oil field;

That was all.