West Texas Intermediate futures added 1.9% to settle near $62.50 a barrel, the third gain in the four past sessions, after China signaled openness to trade negotiations with the Trump administration. Pre-conditions for the talks would include a more consistent US position and a willingness to address China’s concerns around American sanctions and Taiwan, according to a person familiar with the Chinese government’s thinking.
Most of the oil released has been recovered and remediation efforts have started, South Bow Corp. said in a statement Wednesday. The line will be able to operate at no more of 80% of pressure levels at the time of the April 8 spill. At the time of failure, the line was transporting 17,844 barrels per hour, or the equivalent of 428,000 barrels a day.
While Iraq and Russia made a small amount of progress, it was dwarfed by overproduction in habitual quota-violator Kazakhstan, where the backlog expanded by more than 40%. OPEC+ delegates have said that Astana’s persistent offending motivated last month’s surprise policy shift that raised production faster than expected, as Riyadh seeks to discipline the cheats with lower oil prices.
United CEO Brian Larkin said, “The Walton Morant Licence presents a compelling frontier exploration opportunity for investors, offering exposure to a world-class frontier basin with multi-billion-barrel potential. Securing this early license extension until 31 January 2028, is crucial to progressing our work program, and ensuring stability and regulatory certainty sought by potential farm-in partners”.
Crude oil in the SPR stood at 397.0 million barrels on April 11, 396.7 million barrels on April 4, and 364.9 million barrels on April 12, 2024, the report revealed. Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.605 billion barrels on April 11, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were down 1.8 million barrels week on week and up 3.2 million barrels year on year, the report outlined.
Shareholders, especially activist hedge fund Elliott, will want to make their position known at the AGM votes on Thursday. Activist investor Elliott, which has been pushing for dramatic changes at BP since amassing a 5% stake in the supermajor, is likely to express its continued frustration with BP’s performance by voting against the re-election of directors.
The March export numbers could be a glimpse into what’s coming, but not immediately. In fact, some analysts expect a slowdown in Chinese exports in the coming months while the dust from the tariffs settles. “Exports will likely weaken in coming months as the U.S. tariffs [have] skyrocketed,” Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, told CNBC. He added that “in the short term, I expect chaos in supply chains and potential shortage in the U.S. that may drive up inflation.”
As for the security of supply, this also gets a check. Almost all our natural gas and coal are domestically produced. And we export both. Since US demand for power is rising, with natural gas the fuel of choice for a generation, the main risk to long-term affordability is the eventual depletion of our principal gas fields. Also, the US sits atop a roughly three-hundred-year supply of coal if the industry chooses to heed the latest admonitions from the Trump administration with respect to “clean, beautiful coal.” In short, the US, unlike many nations, can remain energy self-reliant for the foreseeable future.
Last February, oil field services giant Schlumberger Ltd (NYSE:SLB) discussed its newly carved SLB New Energy unit which will focus on niches such as carbon solutions, hydrogen, energy storage, geothermal/ geoenergy and critical minerals each with a minimum addressable market of $10 billion, as reported by Bloomberg NEF.
Earlier this week, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) climbed 0.3 million barrels again to 397 million barrels in the week ending April 11. Inventory levels in the SPR are hundreds of millions shy of the levels in inventory prior to the SPR withdrawal that took place under the Biden Administration.