Focus On Fracking -- July 31, 2022

Link here.

The lede:

Natural gas prices hit a 14 year high but closed lower; US oil exports were at a record high; US oil supplies were at new 18 year low, Strategic Petroleum Reserve was at a 37 year low; 4 week average of distillate exports hit a 47 month high.

The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA.

US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending July 22nd indicated that despite another large oil withdrawal from the SPR, increased production from our wells, and a refinery slowdown, we still needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the 4th time in 6 weeks, and for the 21st time over the past 35 weeks, mostly because of another big increase in our oil exports. 

Our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 355,000 barrels per day to an average of 6,164,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 156,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by 789,000 barrels per day to a record high of 4,548,000 barrels per day, which meant that our trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 1,616,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending July 22nd, 1,144,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week. 

Over the same period, production of crude from US wells was reportedly 200,000 barrels per day lower at 12,100,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have totaled an average of 13,716,000 barrels per day during the July 22nd reporting week.

With our oil exports at a record high, we'll include a historical graph of them [at the linked blog], where you can see that prior to the end of 2014, US oil exports, except for those allowed under NAFTA, had been negligible because they had been banned 40 years earlier, in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. The ban on US oil exports was lifted in a spending bill that Congress passed during the last week of 2015, part of a compromise that Obama agreed to in order to avoid a government shutdown.

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After Hours

I had the apartment complex pool to myself this evening, from about 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Then a few folks came out to grill and wade in the pool. 

I swam almost non-stop from 7:30 to 9:30 and listened to Leonard Cohen, Blondie, Bob Dylan from the UE "boombox."