Let's do the math.
Saudi Arabia imports about $30 billion each quarter, link here. Import fees will range from 0.5% to 15%. Let's assume 15% on all imports. $30 billion x 0.15 = $4.5 billion / quarter or $1.5 billion / month.
PIF generates $5 billion / month on a 10% annual return.
At stake is an estimated $100 million in oil royalties waiting in escrow to be claimed as well as any future payments. Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Mark Fox said he plans to take legal action “ASAP,” likely with a federal lawsuit.From the reader:
I haven't seen anything about this in your blog. An "M-Opinion" was issued by the Dept. of Interior last week - May 26th.
It is huge news because it reverses an eleventh hour M-Opinion issued by the Obama Administration just days before the end of his term and concludes that the State of North Dakota owns the minerals under the Missouri Riverbed on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Keep in mind that the Riverbed refers to the land prior to the construction of the Garrison Dam.Screenshot of from the second link below:
The issue of mineral ownership has languished for years. Many felt that Obama waited so long to issue the M-Opinion because it was not well supported by the law and precedence. However, there are arguments on both sides of the issue and it is likely that the Tribe will initiate legal action to pursue their contention of ownership.
The Saudis will be lifting import duties on products ranging from meat, dairy, and vegetables to chemicals, vehicles, and building materials. The import fees on those products will be raised by between 0.5 percentage point and 15 percentage points, starting next week.OPEC basket: $35.46
China’s crude oil imports jumped by 13 percent from April to near record-highs of 11.11 million bpd in May, due to favorable spreads of the Shanghai-traded yuan-denominated oil futures and a ramp-up in refinery throughput, oil analytics firm OilX said in a report this week.
| $37.33 | 6/4/2020 | 06/04/2019 | 06/04/2018 | 06/04/2017 | 06/04/2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 12 | 64 | 61 | 51 | 25 |
By the way, if you are in the mood for another Sophia story.Sophia was in a great mood, as usual, going into Tutor Time.I asked her what the best thing in her life was. There was some silence. I assume she was thinking. I then thought that might not be the most appropriate question to ask, so I answered for her, telling her that she has such a wonderful family, her mom and dad, and especially her two sisters, and going to Tutor Time, and so forth.Then I was quiet.Without missing a beat, but having had time to think, Sophia said: "catching that big fish on my first 'training' day. That was the best thing."LOL.That was the day she did catch that huge bullhead / catfish, maybe two or three pounds, and it was her first bite / her first day ever fishing. And that was about a month ago, and she still remembers.She called that her "training day."
On the way home from Tutor Time yesterday, Sophia told me that her class held class officer elections. Remember, she if five years old. I did not know that Tutor Time / Montessori held such elections.
I was aware of something going on because getting into the car, Sophia handed me a hand-written note on a self-made-envelope-sort-of-thing that said "Vote For Melia."
I asked her how the election turned out. She said it was a tie, 6 - 6. The boys all voted for the boy candidate, Arien, and the girls all voted for the girl candidate.
I can't make this stuff up.
I asked about the candidates' platforms. It sounds like Melia did not have a platform but she was the girls' favorite because she brought in a lot of nice things, like her American Girl doll. Arien actually did have some type of platform, promises about better food or something along that line. It was a bit unclear.
I asked who will be class president now that there was a tie. She didn't really know but putting words into her mouth, two co-presidents, perhaps, she agreed.
I asked her about the vice-president. That was much, much easier: her best friend Hunter, who also has an American Doll.
By the way, that explains why Sophia dressed up Corky in a brand new dress and took her into Tutor Time today. I suggested Corky stay home (Corky tends to wander off and has been known to be gone for two or three weeks before finally showing up again). But Sophia was adamant about taking Corky to school today.
I asked Sophia if she had run for any class officer position. She said, "no." I asked why. Two reasons:
Mind you, Sophia reads quite well; she is five years old.
- no one listens to her instructions; and,
- she can't read; those that ran, could read.
Arien is in the after-school program. He is eleven years old.
By the way, Sophia added that if two boys would have voted for Melia, she would have won. Apparently the girls put a lot of pressure on two boys to vote for Melia but in the end, it appears, they were not swayed by the "American Girl" angle.
| Pool | Date | Days | BBLS Oil | Runs | BBLS Water | MCF Prod | MCF Sold | Vent/Flare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAKKEN | 4-2020 | 30 | 40260 | 39905 | 23467 | 70729 | 70337 | 0 |
| BAKKEN | 3-2020 | 31 | 51198 | 51068 | 32292 | 83562 | 83562 | 0 |
| BAKKEN | 2-2020 | 7 | 15020 | 14894 | 10519 | 21113 | 21082 | 31 |
| BAKKEN | 1-2020 | 5 | 449 | 449 | 7154 | 2123 | 0 | 2123 |
| BAKKEN | 12-2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Pool | Date | Days | BBLS Oil | Runs | BBLS Water | MCF Prod | MCF Sold | Vent/Flare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAKKEN | 4-2020 | 2 | 2047 | 2355 | 2011 | 5126 | 0 | 5122 |
| BAKKEN | 3-2020 | 27 | 41205 | 40528 | 45135 | 79448 | 0 | 79313 |
| BAKKEN | 2-2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Also of note: distillate demand was at a 28 year low, and distillate supplies were at a 37 year high (1983), and what's most notable about that is that they were actually higher in 1983...
We also added over 4 million barrels to the SPR, & that appears to be the most ever added in one week.See this post regarding EIA production estimate released yesterday, June 3, 2020.
The specter of negative prices is hanging over energy markets more than a month after oil’s unforgettable crash below zero.
While crude has staged a rapid recovery after a deal by the biggest producers to curb a surplus, the $600 billion global gas market remains extraordinarily oversupplied. Traders and analysts say the worst may be yet to come as demand falls and storage nears capacity, creating the ideal conditions for negative prices in some parts of the world.
It shows just how far the global energy industry is from recovering from a pandemic-fueled slide in demand and signals more pain for producers from the shale fields of Texas to Australia’s Curtis Island. Unlike the oil market, there’s been no sign of a coordinated response to address the glut, meaning the fallout could be deeper and longer.
“We are in uncharted territory with low demand levels and high storage stocks,” said Guy Smith, head of gas trading at Swedish utility Vattenfall AB. “In the shorter term there is real risk that conditions may be set to allow negative prices in Europe, but only in the very short term.”
| $36.76 | 6/4/2020 | 06/04/2019 | 06/04/2018 | 06/04/2017 | 06/04/2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 12 | 64 | 61 | 51 | 25 |
Energy markets balance — eventually. In the midst of the turmoil we’ve experienced this year, there have been periods when it seemed like markets were going to hit the wall. But even with the historic WTI oil price glitch on April 20, the physical crude oil markets continued to function. That’s the way it is supposed to work, and it’s good news. The bad news is that figuring out how these markets are balancing in these volatile conditions can be challenging if not downright perplexing. Nowhere is that more true than the market for U.S. propane. Production is down, but so is demand. Inventories are up, and so are prices. Propane continues to be exported, even though global demand has been whacked by COVID.
In today’s blog, we explore these developments and put the spotlight on RBN’s NGL Voyager, our subscriber report and data service that we have just reformatted, upgraded and generally reconstructed to meet the information needs of today’s NGL marketplace.
I haven't even looked at the rest of the report, but the first thing I noticed is that a million barrels of oil per day went missing for the third week in a row, ie, production + imports + storage withdrawal has been 1 mbpd greater than refinery use + exports + the SPR addition...
Best guess is that their production number has been wrong...You can see my reply at this post.
Oil traders and analysts scrutinizing U.S. inventory data for signs of a market recovery are being confronted by an odd situation: the math just doesn’t add up.
Various government data sets including stockpiles, production, imports and exports are signaling that current official figures on at least some supplies are excessive.
The excess is showing up in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s so-called crude supply adjustment factor -- the difference between stockpile numbers and those implied by production, refinery demand, imports and exports.
That has averaged negative 980,000 barrels daily over the past four weeks -- the largest in records going back to 2001, and equivalent to more than 27 million barrels.That's nearly exactly what the reader reported: a one-million-bopd discrepancy. The Bloomberg article continues:
The adjustment factor tends to swing back and forth ...
Some investors lay the blame for the current discrepancy on U.S. oil production numbers. While daily output fell 700,000 barrels to 11.2 million in May, they believe oil’s plunge into negative territory in April should have led to a steeper decline.
Just last month, consultancy IHS Markit said that U.S. oil producers are in the process of curtailing 1.75 million barrels a day of existing output by early June...The EIA pushes back:
While output may be a factor, it’s unlikely the full answer. According to the EIA’s Robert Merriam, the accuracy of its production modeling compared to subsequent monthly data has been good, often within 1-2% in most months.
... the EIA’s weekly data has recorded a production decline of 1.9 million barrels, which he said was substantial compared with historical numbers.
He said that there have also some large weekly swings in reported inventory levels and refinery runs, so all the elements within the crude data are moving around far more than they usually do, adding that “the timing of reporting those could also be driving the adjustment lately, as they always do.”
A year ago, the crude adjustment factor caught the attention of energy enthusiasts when the figure was more than 800,000 barrels a day for four weeks, implying the reverse -- that something in the data was undercounted.
Bottom line: there is evidence that US production has declined further than the official estimates. That's interesting because it seems to me that production numbers from Russia and Saudi Arabia are coming in much lower than I had anticipated. [I'm probably the only one that holds that opinion but the production cuts in those two countries seem to be quite remarkable.]The EIA, at the time, had suspected that besides understating oil production, one of the reasons was plant condensate that was associated with natural gas output, but blended into the crude oil stream.
