North America Crude Oil Production Remains Strong

There are signs that crude oil production in the US remains strong, despite the strong correction in prices recently.

The American Association of Railroads (“AAR”) publishes rail traffic data for a variety of commodities in the US and Canada. The subset for petroleum and petroleum products can provide a sense of crude oil volumes being railed across North America (although it also includes refined products like gasoline, distillates, jet fuel and so on).

Here’s the latest monthly data for the US.

Monthly Average of Weekly Railcar Loads, Petroleum and Petroleum Products, US: Jan12 – Jan15 (in 000’s)

Source: AAR.

Monthly volumes up until last January remained strong, far higher than January of the prior year, although slightly below the high recorded last September.

Volumes in Canada were even stronger.

Monthly Average of Weekly Railcar Loads, Petroleum and Petroleum Products, Canada: Jan12 – Jan15 (in 000’s)

Source: AAR.

Last January was a record year in Canada. No signs of low oil prices impacting volumes there.

We also track the weekly data published by the AAR, which is more up to date. This is shown in the following graph.

Weekly Railcar Loads, Petroleum and Petroleum Products, USA: 2015 YTD (Green Line) versus Last 5 Year Range (in 000’s)

Source: AAR.

2014 is at the top of the previous 5-year range (grey cloud), given the strong growth in volumes since 2009. As we can see, 2015 (green line) remains near those highs, at one point even surpassing them.

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