No Wells Coming Off Confidential List; Weekly EIA Petroleum Report Posted -- August 4, 2021

EIA's weekly petroleum report posted. Link here.

• US crude oil in storage increased by 3.6 million bbls from the previous week;
  
• US crude oil in storage now stands at 439.2 million bbls; 6% below five-year-average;
  
• US crude oil imports averaged 6.4 million bbls per day; decreased by 75,000 bpd; averaged about 6.6  million bopd; 15.8% more than same four-week period last year; see last bullet below;
  
• refiners are operating at 91.3% of their operable capacity;
  
• distillate fuel inventories increased by 0.8 million bbls; 6% below last week;
  
• jet fuel supplied was up 42.9% compared to same four-week period last  year;
  
• comment: we need to stop comparing this year's data with last year's date. We need to start comparing this year's data with same period in 2019. But that won't happen.

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Back to the Bakken

NDIC data: may or may not be accurate; may or may not be current. System has been "undergoing maintenance since July 14, 2021."

Active rigs:

$69.07	8/4/2021	08/04/2020	08/04/2019	08/04/2018	08/04/2017
Active Rigs	23	12	58	64	58

No wells coming off confidential list.

RBN Energy:who will be buying the heavy sour Canadian crude moving south on Capline, part 4.

For some time now, a handful of refineries in southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have been able to receive steeply discounted, heavy sour crude from Western Canada by rail or barge — or, in rare cases, by pipeline from Cushing to Nederland, TX, to the St. James, LA, hub. Starting in a few months, though, this same crude also will be able to flow by pipe directly from Patoka, IL, to St. James on the soon-to-be-reversed Capline pipeline. Initially, the southbound volumes on Capline will be modest, but over time they could increase to several hundred thousand barrels a day. Will those barrels be loaded onto supertankers and shipped overseas, or will they be headed for refineries in Louisiana and its eastern neighbors? In today’s blog, we try to answer those questions.

We admit we’ve been a little obsessed about the impending Capline reversal — it’s not every day that one of the largest-diameter crude oil pipelines in the world changes its directional flow. We first mentioned the possibility of turning around the 632-mile, 40-inch-diameter pipeline in one of our earliest blogs, posted nine-and-a-half years ago, and Capline has been a semi-regular blog topic ever since. Today, we wrap up a four-part series on what’s involved in the reversal and what southbound flows on Capline will mean for Western Canadian producers, the St. James hub, exporters, and refiners.