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US Lifted the Crude Oil Export Ban, And
Exports Went Down!
By Charles
Kennedy
Oil Price, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, April 4, 2016
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Just over three months after the authorities lifted the four-decade ban
on crude oil exports, the U.S. has actually exported less this year than
it did over the same period the year before, when the ban was still in
place.
According to Clipper Data market intelligence cited by the
Financial Times, we've seen a 5 percent decline in U.S. crude oil
export volumes since the beginning of this year. The data suggests that on
average we are exporting (waterborne) 325,000 barrels per day now,
compared to 342,000 barrels per day during the first months of 2015.
And there's no official data yet—not since the beginning of this year,
when the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) noted that during
the
week ending 22 January, the U.S. had exported just shy of 400,000
barrels of oil, which again was 25 percent less than what was exported for
the same week in 2014.
An oil tanker that reached a French port in
January was the first post-ban delivery of U.S. crude oil, but things
haven't really picked up pace since then.
January's cargoes,
totaling about 11.3 million barrels, marked a 7 percent decline from U.S.
crude exports in December, according to data by the
U.S. Census Bureau. Shipments during January went to Curacao and
France, in addition to Canada, the primary destination. The total number
of tankers that have set sail with U.S. crude oil will not be known until
comprehensive data on February's shipments is released by the U.S. Census
Bureau.
The immediate beneficiaries of the ban suspension are gas
and oil companies such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil—among the most tireless
lobbyers against the ban—and oil trading giants such as Vitol Group BV and
Trafigura Ltd Pet.
Europe and Asia are flooded with oil from
Russia and the Middle East, though the first two shipments to leave the
U.S. post-export ban went to Europe: one to Germany and the other to
France, to be used in a
refinery in Switzerland. Dutch media outlets
reported in January that a tanker from Houston had reached Rotterdam
port, but this remains just a drop in the global export bucket.
In
Asia, even China's state-run Sinopec—the world's second-largest
refiner—has imported a consignment of U.S. oil, according to a
Reuters source. Japan's Cosmo Oil was the first Asian buyer of U.S.
oil, purchasing some 300,000 barrels of U.S. crude in mid-January, which
will be delivered to its refineries in mid-April.
The very first
South American country that will import U.S. crude oil is Venezuela. In
early February, Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA imported a
550,000-barrel cargo of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) through its
U.S.-based
Citgo Petroleum affiliate. Venezuela started importing foreign crudes
in 2014 amid a fall in its own production - buying mostly Angolan and
Nigerian light grades.
WTI is also expected to be exported to
Israel, where Swiss commodities house Trafigura will ship some 700,000
barrels. Atlantic Trading & Marketing, the U.S. trading unit of French
Total SA, has been planning an export cargo of U.S. crude from Cushing.
Also, earlier this month, Exxon
became the first U.S. oil company to export U.S. crude, sending a
tanker from Texas to a refinery it owns in Italy.
However, storage
is now at the highest level in at least a decade.
U.S., crude
storage levels hit 487 million barrels in early November, closing in
on the 80-year high of 518 million barrels in the last week of February.
According to the
EIA, about 60 percent of the U.S. working storage capacity is filled.
Globally, the picture isn't much better, with the International
Energy Agency (IEA) saying that 1 billion barrels were added to storage in
2015 alone. OPEC has reported that crude oil stockpiles in OECD countries
currently exceed the running five-year average by 210 million barrels.
Article Source:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Lifted-The-Crude-Oil-Export-Ban-And-Exports-WentDown.html
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