Saudi Arabia Adds Record Volumes To Crude Stocks

...anwhile, refining runs fell to 2.20mn b/d, their lowest level since January 2017. At 21.3% of Saudi Arabia’s reported production, the proportion refined is the lowest since 2016. Run rates had been above 25% since 2017 as the kingdom ramped up throughput at its expanded refinery fleet. Rates may well rise fu...

Opec Output On Track For Eight-Year Low

...ly mean one thing. The only question is: By how much will they fall? MEES calculates that this year’s export revenues are at risk of falling below 2017’s $556bn to around $550bn. Will this week’s outcome lift prices sufficiently for 2019 revenues to scrape ahead of 2017?  OPEC WELLHEAD PR...

Saudi Reveals Record Stock Drawdown Post Abqaiq

...re diesel, but at 439,000 b/d, this was actually the lowest since May 2017. This was followed by jet kerosene and gasoline, which both rose above 200,000 b/d for the first time since August 2018 and July 2018 respectively. Net products exports are just about holding on to a year-on-year rise in...

Opec Faces Five Years Of Pain

...ve been in place since January 2017 and there is growing fatigue among producers. Ecuador has decided it’s had enough and announced last month that it is quitting Opec (MEES, 4 October). Opec+ may well secure a further extension next month, but as the current situation with Iraq and Nigeria hi...

US Challenging Saudi As World’s Top Oil Exporter

...eraging 6.96mn b/d, which is slightly less than 2017’s 6.97mn b/d. 2017 was the first year of the Opec+ production agreement which was temporarily eased in the second half of 2018. Crude oil exports may be down this year, but Saudi Arabia is sending record breaking volumes to the world’s number one im...

Saudi Crude Exports Rebound Following Abqaiq Attack

...2,000 b/d in August. But this was dwarfed by a spike in reported fuel oil consumption – primarily consumed for electricity generation including powering water desalination – to a record 800,000 b/d that month. This drove overall oil burn up to a new monthly record of 1.44mn b/d, surpassing July 2017’s pr...

Opec Faces Up To Global Demand Slowdown

...awdown in September. Overall, the IEA put August OECD inventories at 2,974mn barrels, which was “the highest level since September 2017 and were 43.1mn barrels above the five-year average.” Meanwhile, Opec put inventories somewhat lower at 2,937mn barrels, and just 11mn barrels above the five-ye...

Japan: UAE Overtakes Saudi As Number One Supplier

...*For well over a decade Saudi Arabia had been the unrivalled number one crude and condensate supplier to Japan. Saudi market share climbed above 30% in 2011 and rose steadily to hit 40% in 2017, dipping only modestly to 38.1% for 2018. The UAE (almost all Abu Dhabi) was a distant number two fo...

Opec Output Slumps As Ecuador Quits

...at wish to cheat typically pay lip service to production obligations, Ecuador’s outspokenness has been refreshing. As far back as July 2017 Ecuador said “there’s a need for funds for the fiscal treasury, hence we’ve taken the decision to gradually increase output” (MEES, 4 August 2017). Its su...

New Saudi Energy Minister Faces Princely Task

...ngdom’s ministry of energy. For much of that time he has been intimately involved in Saudi Arabia’s work at Opec, forging relationships with counterparts across the globe. Most recently he has been Minister of State for Energy Affairs since 2017. EXPERIENCED HAND From that perspective this is an op...

Saudi Bags Growing Share Of Key Chinese Market

...finers Sinopec and PetroChina shunning Iranian volumes, the bulk of recent arrivals, imported by state trader Zhuhai Zhenrong, appear to have gone into China’s strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), in particular the 19mn barrel site at Jinzhou northeast of Beijing which was completed in 2017. Data in...

Saudi Oil Sector Creaking Amid Heavy Opec Cuts And Summer Demand

...nce 2017, according to the latest data released by Jodi covering the first half of the year. This is hardly a surprise considering that Saudi Arabia’s crude production has itself been cut to multi-year lows through Opec’s efforts to rebalance global markets. Saudi Arabia’s reported crude pr...

Opec’s Market Management Dilemma: From Bad To Worse?

...e Permian Basin, making the region straddling western Texas and southeast New Mexico the centerpiece of not only their US, but their global output plans (MEES, 15 March). Exxon says it is on track to hit 1mn boe/d Permian output by 2024 after paying $6bn in 2017 to expand its regional acreage (ME...

LNG Market Depressed, But For How Long?

...rsus a year earlier. Key Asian importers of LNG, China in particular, were left short of cargoes in the 2017-18 winter (MEES, 5 January 2018). Fearing a repeat, they took in a bumper 58.8mn tons in 4Q 2018, up 11% year-on-year, boosting average prices to over $11/mn BTU. But the winter turned out to...

Hormuz Escalation Spooks Major Asian Economies

...y of 420,000 b/d this year. The US has been making huge inroads into the Korean market, with volumes breaking records for the past five consecutive quarters. Having averaged just 36,000 b/d over the course of 2017, 2Q 2019 volumes averaged a massive 325,000 b/d. This was sufficient to place the US...

Aramco Trading Volumes Surge, With Crude Playing Enhanced Role

...st year saw it emerge as an increasingly active, albeit modest in scale, crude trader. Overall liquids volumes rose from 1.40mn b/d in 2017 to 2.17mn b/d in 2018 (see chart), and the firm says that it exited the year in excess of 4mn b/d. Volumes rose to 4.5mn b/d in 1Q 2019 and are planned to reach 6m...

South Korea 2Q19 Crude & Condensate Imports ('000 B/D): Middle East Share Up Quarter-On-Quarter But Still Down On 2017 Levels

Opec Production Purgatory: Cuts And More Cuts With No End In Sight

...nister Suhail al-Mazrouei warned in 2017 that there “is too much fluctuation within one year. It is not healthy for producers, and it is definitely not healthy for consumers. We need some sort of stability” (MEES, 17 November 2017). He reiterated the message this week in Vienna, saying “once we are cl...

LNG Prices Remain Under Pressure Amid Buoyant Supply, Lackluster Demand

...cond half of 2017. However it is not inconceivable that monthly takings could overtake number one Japan at some stage later this year: they came close in a pre-winter buying spurt last November, and lagged Japanese takings by just over 1mn tons for both April and May. Projections in the IEA’s latest ‘Ga...

Saudi Fuel Oil Consumption Soars

...e latest Jodi data to April shows that combined crude and fuel burn has averaged 772,000 b/d so far in 2019 (up 6% year-on-year), crude oil burn is down 16% year-on-year to 297,000 b/d. Based on seasonal trends, this implies that liquids burn could eclipse 2017’s record 974,000 b/d and push towards 1m...