By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Communications
Crude prices continue to rise after a three-day rally last week.
The benchmark New York futures contract was trading over $81 per barrel Monday for the first time since mid-April. Brent crude was fetching a little over $85 per barrel in London. Kansas Common crude at CHS in McPherson starts the week at $70.75 per barrel, after gaining half a dollar on Friday. That's a nearly ten-dollar increase over prices at the start of this month.
The weekly Rotary Rig Count from Baker Hughes drops to 664 active rigs, down one oil rig and three gas rigs from last week. The breakout for horizontal drilling was down eight rigs. The tally in New Mexico was down two rigs. Oklahoma and Colorado were down one rig each. Louisiana was up two rigs.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil & Gas Service is unchanged at 16 in the eastern half of the state, and up one to 23 active rigs west of Wichita. The tally is down nearly five percent from a month ago and down more than 31 percent from a year ago. Operators so far this year have spudded 697 wells, down 201 wells from a year ago. Total footage drilled is down 26 percent.
Of the ten new drilling permits filed in western Kansas last week, regulators okayed one in Barton County and one in Stafford County. The statewide year-to-date tally increases by 24 to 744 new permits, compared to 944 a year ago. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports 36 new well completions statewide, 12 of those in western Kansas. That's 994 new well-completions so far this year, compared to 909 a year ago.
The Kansas Geological Survey reported statewide crude production through the first quarter of 2023 of 76,756 barrels per day on total production of just over 6.9 million barrels.
Barton County pumped just under 370,000 barrels or nearly 4,100 barrels per day. Ellis County led the way with 543,000 barrels of production, for an average of 6,040 barrels per day. Operators in Russell County produced 333,000 barrels, while Stafford County pumped 222,000.
A new tally shows US crude output in May reached nearly 393,000 barrels, or about 12.6 million barrels per day. That's slightly lower than the daily average in April. The report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows operators in Kansas pumped 2.3 million barrels in May, or a little over 76,096 barrels per day. Texas produced more than 40 percent of the national total, pumping more than 170 million barrels, or nearly 5.5 million barrels per day.
U.S. crude-oil production declined last week for the third week in a row to the lowest total in nine weeks. The weekly count from the Energy Information Administration shows output of just over 12.2 million barrels per day in the week through July 21, down 99,000 barrels per day from a week earlier and just 74,000 barrels per day more than a year ago.
Production drops to its lowest level since May 17th. Crude oil inventories dropped by 600,000 barrels to 456.8 million as of July 21. The Energy Information Administration said stockpiles are about two percent above the five-year average for this time of year. The U.S. imported 6.4 million barrels per day last week, down 807,000 barrels per day from a week earlier. The four-week average is about one percent higher than a year ago.
Oil and gas had the best year ever in Canada.
That's the word from energy analysts who say the country's energy exports increased by nearly $77 BILLION in 2022. Total exports rose 22 percent, and the share of energy products to total exports rose from 21 to 27 percent. The spike comes despite a new call by a government official to phase out what he called "unabated fossil fuels" by ending government energy subsidies in Canada.
Oil patch employment continues to rise in Texas. Last month, oil and gas employment in the Lone Star State rose above 200-thousand workers for the first time in more than three years. The Texas Workforce Commission reported that the patch added 2,500 jobs in June.
The Kansas Geological Society recognized and named eight new oil fields in Kansas last week. Murfin Drilling Company of Wichita scored two of those in Cheyenne County in northwestern Kansas. The Devil's Canyon Southeast and White Crab fields mark the Wichita company's second and third wildcat discoveries in Cheyenne County this year, and at least their fifth since 1988.