EIA grossly overstated U.S. oil production in June

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dan_s
Posts: 37326
Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

EIA grossly overstated U.S. oil production in June

Post by dan_s »

The EIA just reported actual U.S. oil production for June.

Actual production was 9,097,000 BOPD, which compares to their weekly estimates of 9,317,000 BOPD. This is the third month in a row that actual production was MUCH LOWER than what they had reported to the market.

This may help explain why the weekly storage reports show much larger declines in oil storage than what the "experts" predicted.

As I have been telling you for years now, the weekly numbers that EIA puts out are just estimates. They are not much better than Wild Ass Guesses ("WAGs") that most of us could come up with.

The EIA does not have measuring devices on the more than a million oil & gas wells in the United States. They do not know what actual production is during any week until the monthly state reports come out. Upstream companies must report actual production to the states with 60 days after the end of a month. Those reports can be "amended", but the overall change is rarely a big number.

May production was 9,169,000 BOPD and June production was 9,097,000 BOPD. Oil production in the United States DECLINED in June.

What would oil prices have done in the 3rd quarter if EIA had reported a DECLINE in U.S. oil production?????????????????????

Check is yourself at: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/production/
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
mkarpoff
Posts: 810
Joined: Fri May 30, 2014 4:27 pm

Re: EIA grossly overstated U.S. oil production in June

Post by mkarpoff »

Predicated on your rhetorical question, I guess we should now see prices start to go up. Is that your take?
dan_s
Posts: 37326
Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

Re: EIA grossly overstated U.S. oil production in June

Post by dan_s »

My take is that crude inventories will continue to fall and at some point get the proper reaction from the market.

Oil cycles overshoot the market. The global oil market is HUGE. When supply/demand get back into "balance" the declines will not sudden stop and supply will not suddenly stay in balance with demand. The word "glut" will be replaced with "shortage".

In my opinion, predictions of U.S. oil production soaring over 10 million barrels per day were and still are extremely optimistic. I saw a report six months ago from a Wall Street firm that predicted U.S. oil production would top 12 million barrels per day by the end of 2018. Forgetting for a moment the $Trillions in capital investment that would be necessary to make that happen, it is almost physically impossible because of infrastructure limits.

As I have posted here hundreds of times, the EIA's weekly numbers are nothing more than WAGs based on formulas. Here is ACTUAL daily U.S. production based on state reports. You can find this yourself on the EIA website. Just search "oil production".

Jan = 8,858,000
Feb = 9,075,000
Mar = 9,107,000
Apr = 9,083,000
May = 9,169,000
Jun = 9,097,000

So, despite a significant increase in the active rig count, U.S. production growth is flat since January. Does this look like we will get to 10,000,000 BOPD anytime soon?
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
dan_s
Posts: 37326
Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

Re: EIA grossly overstated U.S. oil production in June

Post by dan_s »

Actual U.S. crude oil production:

June, 2016 was 261,333,000 barrels or 8,711,100 barrels per day
June, 2017 was 272,910,000 barrels or 9,097,000 barrels per day

So for the year ending June 30, 2017 U.S. crude oil production increased by 385,900 barrels per day.

Do you now see why all of this talk of U.S. oil production being able to meet global demand all by itself seems a bit overblown to me. Global demand for oil is now going up my approximately 1,500,000 million barrels per day year after year after year. And the U.S. consumes over 17,000,000 barrels per day.
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
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