{"id":33754,"date":"2018-04-26T06:19:48","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33754"},"modified":"2018-04-26T06:19:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:19:48","slug":"expect-much-tighter-oil-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33754","title":{"rendered":"Expect Much Tighter Oil Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expect Much Tighter Oil Markets<\/a><\/h3>\n\"offshore<\/picture>\n
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As oil prices hover close to multi-year highs, Saudi’s Oil Minister has hit the wires saying that OPEC ‘shouldn’t be complacent and listen to some of the noise such as mission accomplished<\/a>‘ . Just as we learned earlier in this economic cycle via ‘don’t fight the Fed’, we too should take heed: ‘Don’t fight the Falih’.<\/p>\n

Year-to-date, U.S. crude inventories have risen by 3 million barrels, compared to 53 million barrels for the same period last year. Our seasonal Q1 build has been distinctly errant.<\/p>\n

While a number of factors can be assigned for such a lack of upward trajectory (higher exports, stronger refinery runs, lower waterborne imports), the slashing of crude flows to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia has also played a part. Saudi crude deliveries were down over 50 million barrels year-on-year in Q1, a third consecutive quarter of considerably lower year-on-year imports.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned combo of higher exports, stronger refinery runs and lower waterborne imports have colluded to leave Q1 U.S. crude inventories 110 million barrels lower than end-March last year. (Granted, this is from a high-water mark indeed – the absolute record of U.S. crude inventories at 535.54 million barrels, but hey).<\/p>\n

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(Click to enlarge)<\/p>\n

In 2017, Saudi crude deliveries to the U.S. dropped by 160,000 bpd versus the prior year. Meanwhile, total OPEC deliveries to U.S. shores in both 2016 and 2017 averaged ~3.2 million barrels per day, with imports last year really strong in the first half of the year, before taking a dive in the second half (hark, below).<\/p>\n

In Q1 of this year, OPEC deliveries averaged close to 2.7 million bpd, down nearly 20 percent on year-ago levels and the lowest quarter since Q3 2015. This is both a combination of OPEC reining in supplies, and a lesser need from U.S. refiners for OPEC barrels, as they lean as heavy as they can on soaking up rising domestic production.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Expect Much Tighter Oil Markets As oil prices hover close to multi-year highs, Saudi’s Oil Minister has hit the wires saying that OPEC ‘shouldn’t be complacent and listen to some of the noise such as mission accomplished‘ . Just as we learned earlier in this economic cycle via ‘don’t fight the Fed’, we too should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11619,2245,592,5332,600,701],"class_list":["post-33754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-matt-smith","tag-oil-market","tag-oil-price","tag-oilprice-com","tag-opec","tag-saudi-arabia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33755,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33754\/revisions\/33755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}