Open Thread, Any Energy Related Subject

Data for the below chart is from the Weekly Petroleum Status Report.

Daily Price Chart

Here we have a three year WTI price comparison chart. You can see that the 2014 price collapse began at almost the exact same time of the year as the 2008 price collapse. The 2008 collapse was a lot more dramatic and fell faster and slightly lower than the 2014 collapse. The 2008 collapse bottomed out around Christmas of that year and the 2014 did not pause until late January 2015. However by late October 2009 the WTI price was already in the $80 range. This time however we are still stuck below $50.

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The EIA Changes Data Collection Methods

EIA begins monthly survey-based reporting of U.S. crude oil production

With the release of today’s  Petroleum Supply Monthly, EIA is incorporating the first survey-based reporting of monthly U.S. crude oil production statistics. Today’s Petroleum Supply Monthly includes estimates for June 2015 crude oil production using new survey data for 13 states and the federal Gulf of Mexico, and revises figures previously reported for January through May 2015.

From the EIA’s Monthly Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production webpage.

Beginning with the June 2015 data, EIA is providing estimates for crude oil production (including lease condensate) based on data from the EIA-914 survey. Survey-based monthly production estimates starting with January 2015 are provided for Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, and the Federal Gulf of Mexico. For two states covered by the EIA-914—Oklahoma and West Virginia—and all remaining oil-producing states and areas not individually covered by the EIA-914, production estimates are based on the previous methodology (using lagged state data). When EIA completes its validation of Oklahoma and West Virginia data, estimates for these states will also be based on EIA-914 data. For all states and areas, production data prior to 2015 are estimates published in the Petroleum Supply Monthly. Later in 2015, EIA will report monthly crude oil production by API gravity category for the individually-surveyed EIA-914 states.

This is great news for those of us who have been complaining for years about the EIA’s poor and misleading data collection methods.Petroleum Supply Monthly

June C+C production, according to the Monthly Energy Review, was almost 9.6 million barrels per day. But the Petroleum Supply Monthly cuts that by 303,000 bpd. And they have production dropping by 316,000 barrels per day in the last two months, May and June.

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