It's A Wash -- Globally -- May 24, 2022

Kashagan oil field is tracked here and linked at the sidebar at the right.

Headline today: oil production halves at Kazakhstan's giant Kashagan field.

• routine maintenance, if anything in Kazakhstan is routine;
• start date: May 19, 2022
• end date: August 3, 2022
• OPEC+ quota:
• 1.638 million bpd (May, 2022)
• 1.85 million bpd (June, 2022)
• actual production:
• cut in half since early May (due to maintenance)
  
• production will stop completely in June due to maintenance
• I don't know what Kashagan was actually producing prior to May, but let's say it was about 1.5 million bpd
• so, globally:
• Kazakhstan's daily production dropping about 1.5 million bpd; and,
• Biden's release from the US SPR: 1 million bpd.
• Net: - 0.5 million bpd

I often make simple arithmetic errors, but I'm pretty sure 1.0 minus 1.5 is close to a minus 0.5.

Again, that SPR release was very prescient, very timely, very fortunate. 

Speaking of the SPR release, the "next" part of that 180 million-bbl release over six months was announced today:

• again, this is a sale, not a "swap" which is the usual nature of things with regard to the SPR
• specifics:
• 39 million sour bbls
• 1.1 million sweet bbls
• total: 40.1 millioon bbls
• delivery period for the sweet oil: June 21, 2022 - June 30, 2022
• delivery period for the sour oil: July 1, 2022 - August 15, 2022 (slightly less than 1 million bopd)

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

WTI: pretty much unchanged.