By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Communications
The Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association holds its annual mid-year meeting this week at the Ellis County Fairgrounds in Hays.
KIOGA offers an opening hog roast and game night on Wednesday, followed on Thursday morning by registration and the trade show. The gathering includes seminars with prominent geologists, and tours of Hess Services and Triple Eight Equine Center, along with golf, pickle ball and sporting clays.
Find out more at kioga.org.
Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson gained another 75 cents a barrel Friday to start the week at $76 a barrel. That's down 75 cents from a week ago, but up two dollars from the first of the month and four dollars higher than at the first of the year.
There are eight new drilling permits recorded last week statewide, with seven of those in western Kansas, including two new drilling locations in Barton County. That's 240 new permits this year, compared to 353 a year ago and 407 at this time two years ago.
Independent Oil and Gas Service reports operators completed 31 wells across the state. Eleven of those were west of Wichita, including one in Barton County and one in Stafford County.
This week's Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil and Gas Service is off by six percent from a week ago and down 24 percent from a year ago. There are 12 active rigs in eastern Kansas, which is up one for the week, and 17 west of Wichita, which is down three. Drilling was underway or about to begin Friday on two leases in Barton County.
The Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes shows 616 active rigs nationwide, which is down two oil rigs and one gas rig. The tally in Texas is down three for the week. New Mexico is up one.
Domestic crude production held steady in the lower-48 states, but dipped slightly in Alaska. Average U.S. output for the week through April 5th was 13,136,000 barrels per day, down 4,000 barrels per day from a week ago. The Energy Information Administration reports four-week average production rose a thousand barrels a day from the week before, and was nearly a million barrels per day higher than the same four weeks last year. The current four-week average is 13.135 million barrels per day.
The Energy Information Administration said domestic crude inventories increased nearly six million barrels to just over 457 million barrels as of April 5. Stockpiles are about two percent below the five-year average for this time of year.
Exports of petroleum products set a record last year, with propane leading the way. The Energy Information Administration reports total product exports of 6.1 million barrels per day, up 2.5% to a new all-time high. Propane exports rose 14% to another record, topping out at 1.6 million barrels day. Propane makes up 26% of all U.S. petroleum product exports, more than any other petroleum product. The Energy Information Administration says propane is consumed globally for space heating and is increasingly used as a petrochemical feed stock in East Asia.
Crude oil imports outpaced crude exports by nearly four million barrels per day last week. Product exports topped product imports by more than four million barrels a day. The U.S. is a net petroleum exporter by about 760-thousand barrels a day.
Crude oil imports averaged 6.4 million barrels per day last week, down slightly from the week before. Crude exports averaged 2.7 million barrels per day, down more than a million barrels a day from a week earlier.
Petroleum product imports were up 42% week-over-week at 2.3 million barrels per day. Product exports rose nearly a million barrels to 6.8 million barrels a day.
The number-three crude producing state rebounds from a cold-weather downturn, again. The latest production totals from North Dakota show a 13% increase in February. The Department of Mineral Resources reports output just under 1.25 million barrels per day, up from 1.1 million the month before. Natural gas production and gas-capture rates were each dramatically higher after a big drop in January due to cold weather and blizzards.
Lawmakers' efforts to ban all oil and gas exploration in Colorado have failed to find pay dirt, but the industry is braced for new efforts. The state's Senate Bill 159 was voted down in committee March 28. That bill called for a phased-in ban on oil and gas drilling permits within five years. The industry says that would have killed more than 181-thousand jobs, $321 billion in economic activity, and created a $48 billion hole in state and local budgets.
Colorado is currently the nation's fourth-biggest crude oil producer. The industry claims to have reduced emissions along Colorado’s Front Range by more than 50% within the last decade, and says ongoing efforts to stymie the permitting process will do little to limit emissions.
Spiking crude prices spike the Biden administration's plan to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Department of Energy unexpectedly canceled crude purchases aimed at refilling the reserve due to surging prices.
The Department of Energy announced in March that it was soliciting three million barrels of oil, to help refill one of the four major government storage facilities. The target price announced for the buybacks is $79 or less, more than $10 below current prices. The government has bought back about 32.3 million barrels since last year.
The reserve, which held some 600 million barrels before the beginning of the Ukraine invasion, remains just over half-full, with about 363 million barrels as of April.
The Pentagon scolds Ukraine over recent drone attacks. The U.S. Defense Secretary told a Senate Committee this week that Ukraine would be better served taking on Russian military targets instead of refineries. Secretary Lloyd Austin is worried that recent Ukrainian drone attacks could have what he called a "knock-on effect" on energy markets.
Ukraine recently launched a string of drone attacks aimed at reducing fuel supplies to the Russian military, and cutting the revenues funding Moscow's war effort.