Chart Analysis丨Output and Stock Enjoy Sustained Growth Why Has American been Importing Petroleum Largely
- Sep 30,2016
- From：GYIE
Last Wednesday, data from United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed that the average daily increase in America crude oil inventory reached 1.055 million barrels in the week of August 5 and the crude oil inventory hit 524 million barrels. Except for average daily imported commercial crude oil of 8.404 million barrels for strategic reserves, such an inventory decreased by 334,000 barrels from the inventory of the last week. In August, the average daily supplied crude oil was 20.777 million barrels, with a year-on-year growth of 1.9%. Tim Evans, an energy future analyst from Citibank, said that it was not a temporary fluctuation, but a constant trend.
According to data provided in the following table, the monthly crude oil imported by America in the first half of 2016 fluctuated but undoubtedly rose over the same period of last year. In addition, data from Baker Hughes showed that the number of active oil drilling platforms in America rose for 7 weeks in a row to 396 in total in the week of August 12, which reflected constant increase of American crude oil production.
Generally, America recorded a fast increase in crude oil production and import as well as inventory. Then we may wonder why America still kept high crude oil import when both production and inventory increased.
Firstly, after the international sanction was lifted at the beginning of this year, Iran was committed to raising crude oil production and export. Although Iran’s crude oil cannot be sold directly to America, it had a ripple effect in other destinations in the oil market, resulting in more crude oil flowing into America. Meanwhile, to win market share, Iran always overwhelmed its rivals by lower crude oil price. As a result, European and Asian countries whose sales reduced due to higher price than Iran price turned to sold petroleum to America.
Secondly, as OPEC made decision to keep market share a priority, each oil producing county, especially Saudi Arabia, began to increase their production. Saudi Arabia even smashed its production record in July. The author learned from the data from official EIA website that the crude oil imported by America from OPEC countries had a year-on-year increase in each month of the first half of 2016. The average increase was about 17%.