Explaining EIA's "Fudge Factor" -- RBN Energy -- March 9, 2023.

Active rigs: 44.

Peter Zeihan newsletter. 

WTI: $76.53.

Natural gas: $2.534.

Friday, March 10, 2023: 36 for the month; 198 for the quarter, 198 for the year
39137, conf, CLR, Micahlucas 6-5H1,
39132, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Claire Rose 3-31-30-159N-99W-MBH,

Thursday, March 9, 2023: 34 for the month; 196 for the quarter, 196 for the year
39142, conf, SOGC (Sinclair), Hovden Federal 4-20H
39136, conf, CLR, Micahlucas 5-5HH,

On March 7, 2023, the most interesting energy story ever. Archived.

Now, this today, RBN Energy: explaining the EIA's huge unaccounted crude oil imbalances. 

The numbers don’t add up.

Literally.

The most closely watched energy statistics in the world have a problem, and it’s been getting worse over the past two years. We’re talking about EIA’s U.S. crude oil supply, demand and inventory balances, which are published each week and then trued up about 60 days later in monthly data.

The problem is that the balances don’t balance. EIA uses a plug number alternatively called “adjustment” or “unaccounted for” to force supply and demand to equate. That would not be an issue if the plug number was small and flipped frequently from positive to negative, likely due to timing inconsistencies with the input data. But that’s not the case.

The number is mostly positive, meaning more demand than supply. And the difference can be mammoth: last week it was 2.3 MMb/d, or 18.4% of U.S. crude production.

It seems like barrels are somehow materializing out of nowhere. But now we know where, because EIA just finished a 90-day study of the crude imbalance that reveals the sources of the problem and what it is going to take to fix it. In today’s RBN blog, we will delve into what has been causing the problem, what it means for interpreting EIA statistics, and what EIA is doing to address the issues.