Focus On Fracking -- May 15, 2023

Locator: 44650B.   

Focus on fracking: posted overnight. 

The lede:

• gas rigs drop most in 7 years;
• oil surplus at 600,000 bpd despite 1.3 million bpd OPEC shortfall;
• distillates supplies at 6 month low 

US oil supply and disposition data from the EIA:

US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending May 5, 2023, showed that after a big drop in our oil exports and a big release of oil from the SPR, we had oil left to add to our stored commercial crude supplies for the 2nd time in 7 weeks, and for the 22nd time in the past 36 weeks, even as new oil supplies that the EIA could not account for were lower this week than last.

Our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 843,000 barrels per day to 5​,​553,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 21,000 barrels per day the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 1,861,000 barrels per day to 2,876,000 barrels per day, which combined meant that the net of our trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 2,677,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending May 5, 2023, 1,018,000 more 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 unchanged at 12,300,000 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 averaged a total of 14,977,000 barrels per day during the May 5th reporting week…

The EIA "discrepancy" continues -- despite suggesting they would "work" the problem, there has been no explanation forthcoming from the EIA to attempt to explain the discrepancy.