Locator: 50748B.
Apple is the story today: let's see if the opening corroborates that?
- Trump to take two CEOs with him to China -- CEOs of Apple and Nvidia.
Jobs report today: number of jobs added last month doubled the expectation!
- full employment; and,
- no wage growth.
Qualcomm: I spoke too soon. It looks like Qualcomm is the story today. QCOM is up $12 in futures.
Ratio, CPUs : GPUs --
- one year ago: 1:5
- this next year: will trend toward 1:1
- could actually be greater than 1:1
Traveling: Trump to take two CEOs with him to China -- CEOs of Apple and Nvidia.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $94.81.
New wells reporting today:
- Sunday, May 10, 2026: 18 for the month, 118 for the quarter, 275 for the year,
- 41739, conf, Hess, EN-Rohde-LE-157-94-3625H-1,
- Saturday, May 9, 2026: 17 for the month, 117 for the quarter, 274 for the year,
- 41844, conf, Hunt Oil, Kandiyohi 159-90-5-17H-2,
- Friday, May 8, 2026: 16 for the month, 116 for the quarter, 273 for the year,
- 41860, conf, Devon Energy, Finn 13-25F 2H,
RBN Energy: refinery capacity creep, falling inventories may limit US crude export surge. Link here. Archived.
U.S. crude oil production averaged a record 13.6 MMb/d in 2025, a mark nearly 1.6 MMb/d higher than 2023, but crude export volumes remained remarkably stable — at or very near 4.1 MMb/d on an annual basis — over the same three-year period. Export terminals along the U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) could have been sending out much more, as evidenced by the recent, Iran-conflict-related surge to nearly 6 MMb/d, but there’s often been a better, more profitable alternative: running that incremental oil through USGC refineries whose capacities have been increasing in subtle but important ways. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss these “capacity creep” expansion projects and their effect on U.S. crude oil and refined product exports.
Unsurprisingly, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz upended the generally organized patterns of the international oil trade. In a flash, the waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil production passed was effectively shut down, stranding crude-laden supertankers in the Persian Gulf and shutting down oil and gas production in much of the war-torn region. The effects have been widespread. Dozens of refineries in Asia that depend heavily on crude from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Persian Gulf producers were left to scramble for alternative sources of supply, including the U.S. Some refineries in Europe faced shortfalls too, if not as severe, and also sought out U.S. oil. In addition, large short‑term draws from storage (both commercial storage and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR), driven by higher prices and strong overseas demand, have helped enable a temporary spike in U.S. crude exports, but this is unlikely to be sustainable over the long term.
U.S. crude exports will likely revert back to previous levels if trends over the last few years hold. U.S. crude output (sum of stacked layers and left axis in Figure 1 below) reached a record 13.6 MMb/d in 2025 and peaked at 13.9 MMb/d in October, according to monthly data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Despite that growth, the share of those barrels headed for export (purple line and right axis) held at about 30% as U.S. refiners appeared to be taking on most of the additional output, gradually increasing domestic crude runs (arrow and orange layer) as export volumes (teal layer) held mostly steady. So far in 2026, production has edged lower from late-2025 levels and RBN expects overall production volumes to remain mostly flat compared to last year, with Permian growth offset by modest declines elsewhere.
Figure 1. Crude Oil Export Percentage. Source: RBN
