Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Update On Sempra's Coast Azul LNG Project -- Total Secures Stake In Project -- December 9, 2020

See this post for background

Today:
  • Sempra Energy and IEnova say their ECA Liquefaction joint venture has signed an equity investment agreement for Total to acquire a 16.6% equity stake in the Energia Costa Azul Phase 1 liquefied natural gas export project; terms are not disclosed. 
  • Sempra and IEnova will each retain 41.7% ownership stakes in the project to be located in Baja California, Mexico. 
  • Last month, ECA LNG announced it reached a final investment decision for the construction and operation of the ~$2B facility, making it the only LNG-export project in the world to have reached FID so far this year
  •  Earlier this year, Total signed a 20-year sale and purchase agreement for ~1.7M metric tons/year of LNG from the facility.

Notes From All Over -- Early Evening Edition -- December 9, 2020

Reminder: Schwab recently departed San Francisco. 

From twitter today:

MRO WIth Another Permit In Bailey Field -- December 9, 2020

Breaking: CNBC reporting explosion on SpaceX pad. Unmanned aircraft.

Mark Perry: the pervasive proliferation of preferred pronouns in higher education.

****************************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$45.52
12/9/202012/09/201912/09/201812/09/201712/09/2016
Active Rigs1556645340

One new permit, #38016:

  • Operator: MRO
  • Field: Bailey
  • Comments:
    • MRO has a permit for another Loraas well in Baily oil field
    • 38016, MRO, Bailey, Loraas 44-21H, 225 FNL 965 FEL

Approved for confidential status:

  • Operator: CLR; six wells; five Gordon Federal wells and one Polk Federal well;

One permit renewed:

  • BR: a Hawktail permit in Dunn County

Just Noting For The Archives -- December 9, 2020

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

Hope no one missed this one:

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Apple

Link here.  TSMC. There are three chip companies / SoC companies that intrigue me -- TSMC, AWS, and Apple. Apparently Apple is continuing to work on a self-driving car.

Link here. Tim Cook teases the future of Apple Watch: "Think about the amount of sensors in your car."

Link here. AirPods Max development took four years.

The Distillate Story Continues -- EIA -- December 9, 2020

Link here

Distillate Fuel Inventories




Week

Date of Report

Change in Millions

Relative to 5-Yr Avg

Week 1

August 26, 2020

1.40

24.0%

Week 2

September 2, 2020

-1.70

23.0%

Week 3

September 10, 2020

-1.70

20.0%

Week 4

September 16, 2020

3.50

22.0%

Week 5

September 23, 2020

-3.40

21.0%

Week 6

September 30, 2020

-3.20

21.0%

Week 7

October 7, 2020

-1.00

23.0%

Week 8

October 15, 2020

-7.20

19.0%

Week 9

October 21, 2020

-3.80

19.0%

Week 10

October 28, 2020

-4.50

17.0%

Week 11

November 4, 2020

-1.60

18.0%

Week 12

November 12, 2020

-5.40

15.0%

Week 13

November 18, 2020

-5.20

11.0%

Week 14

November 25, 2020

-1.40

8.0%

Week 15

December 2, 2020

3.20

8.0%

Week 16

December 9, 2020

5.20

11.0%

Did Anyone See This Coming? US Crude Oil Imports Jump Week-Over-Week -- EIA -- December 9, 2020

Vince Lombardi

My sentiments exactly!

From the weekly EIA petroleum report:

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.5 million barrels per day last week, increased by 1.1 million barrels per day from the previous week.

Why would this happen? US crude oil inventories increased by a whopping 15 million bbls of oil last week. The last thing the hubs needed was more oil. And yet, the price of oil hardly moves. 

Crude Oil Imports




Week (week-over-week)

Date of Report

Raw Data, millions of bbls

Change (millions of bbls)

Week 0

March 11, 2029

6.4

0.174

Week 1

March 18, 2020

6.5

0.127

Week 2

March 25, 2020

6.1

-0.422

Week 30

October 7, 2020

5.7

0.600

Week 31

October 15, 2020

5.3

-0.447

Week 32

October 21, 2020

5.1

-0.167

Week 33

October 28, 2020

5.7

-0.131

Week 34

November 4, 2020

5.0

-0.600

Week 35

November 12, 2020

5.5

0.470

Week 36

November 18, 2020

5.3

-0.245

Week 37

November 25, 2020

5.2

-0.026

Week 38

December 2, 2020

5.4

0.171

Week 39

December 9, 2020

6.5

1.100

Holy Mackerel! Did Anyone See This Coming? The Weekly US Crude Oil Build? Surges -- December 9, 2020

Updates

December 10, 2020: See first comment. Reader cites builds in crude oil inventories back in April, 2020. The reader is so correct. Look at the builds in crude oil in those five weeks during the month of "April." It was during this period that WTI crashed and on April 20, 2020, actually "went negative."

Week 67

March 4, 2020

0.8

444.1

Week 68

March 11, 2020

7.7

451.8

Week 69

March 18, 2020

2.0

453.7

Week 70

March 25, 2020

1.6

455.4

Week 71

April 1, 2020

13.8

469.2

Week 72

April 8, 2020

15.2

484.4

Week 73

April 22, 2020

15.0

518.6

Week 74

April 15, 2020

19.2

503.6

Week 75

April 29, 2020

9.0

527.6

Week 76

May 6, 2020

4.6

532.2

Week 77

May 13, 2020

-0.7

531.5

Week 78

May 20, 2020

-5.0

526.5

 Original Post

Vince Lombardi

This confirms my suspicion that no one knows what is going on. [Assuming the EIA report is not in error and that I'm reading it correctly.] Link here.

Did anyone see this coming?

From the EIA today, holy mackerel:

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 15.2 million barrels from the previous week.

At 503.2 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 11% above the five year average for this time of year.

Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 4.2 million barrels last week and are about 5% above the five year average for this time of year.

Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending components inventories increased last week.

Distillate fuel inventories increased by 5.2 million barrels last week and are about 11% above the five year average for this time of year.

It will be interesting to see "Focus on Fracking" this Sunday

Re-balancing (many rows are hidden to keep the spreadsheet short enough to fit on the blog). When I re-started this spreadsheet back in 2018 there was much talk about "re-balancing." US crude oil inventories were at 447 million bbls. Today, a huge, huge inventory build, and US crude oil inventories are now over 500 million bbls. 

Based on recent OPEC+ action, they didn't see this coming either. 

But someone must have seen it coming: WTI/OPEC/Brent prices barely move.


Week

Date of Report=

Change

Million Bbls Storage

Over/under 5-year average

0

Week 0

November 21, 2018

4.9

446.9


1

Week 1

November 28, 2018

3.6

450.5


2

Week 2

December 6, 2018

-7.3

443.2


3

Week 3

December 12, 2018

-1.2

442.0


4

Week 4

December 19, 2018

-0.5

441.5


5

Week 5

December 28, 2018

0.0

441.4


82

Week 82

June 17, 2020

1.2

539.3

15%

83

Week 83

June 24, 2020

1.4

540.7

16%

84

Week 84

July 1, 2020

-7.2

533.5

15%

85

Week 85

July 8, 2020

5.7

539.2

18%

86

Week 86

July 15, 2020

-7.5

531.7

17%

87

Week 87

July 22, 2020

4.9

536.6

19%

88

Week 88

July 29, 2020

-10.6

526.0

17%

89

Week 89

August 5, 2020

-7.4

518.6

16%

90

Week 90

August 12, 2020

-4.5

514.1


102

Week 102

November 4, 2020

-8.0

484.4

7%

103

Week 103

November 12, 2020

4.3

488.7

6%

104

Week 104

November 18, 2020

8.0

489.5


105

Week 105

November 25, 2020

-0.8

488.7

6%

106

Week 106

December 4, 2020

-0.7

488.0

7%

107

Week 107

December 9, 2020

15.2

503.2

11%