EIA figures for last week are out, massive 13Mb draw in crude inventories is driving prices upward, but not by much. Perhaps it's because last week was also the largest US net export week since late fall 1944.
Lol....the #1 consumer posts it's largest net export since the big one, and prices go up. These algos are a joke.
I agree with the sentiment, but I think there's also a nuance in the US oil consumption / export numbers that is also important to remember, and that will account for some of that "#1 consumer posts it's largest net export...". My understanding of refineries in America in general, and the Gulf Coast region in particular, is that they are optimized for heavy crude oils. The heavy crude oils (again - my understanding - not a petroleum engineer here
) tend to come from traditional wells (rather than fracking), and are also what Venezuela (noteworthy for the US as it's one reason the Gulf Coast refiners optimized around heavy oils - not the only supplier by any means) mostly supplies. I've read that Venezuelan oil is so heavy / thick, they import crude that is on the lighter side (such as US fracked oil) to blend with their oil, and then export the blend (given that they're exporting anything these days
).
Anyway - each refinery is optimized around particular grades of oil, which I'll simplify to heavy and light for this comment (sweet / sour being the other important vector I know about). Refineries can be changed between the two, but it's a significant capital expense that's only reasonable to pursue because it's cheaper than building a new refinery. And you don't make the change for a few months or a few years - it's a change that you need to be confident about for years to pay for the capital expense.
Anyway - the Gulf Coast refineries tended to optimization for heavy crude, but the big increase in US crude in recent years is on the light side as that's what you get out of tight oil deposits / fracking. That oil can be used by the refineries optimized for heavy oil, but not well. So it ends up being desirable to export the light oil we're producing a lot of, and importing the heavy oil that the refineries are optimized for. Heck - it might even be good on the shipping front as ships can bring heavy oil and unload it - and then load up light oil to carry away, thereby carrying a cargo in both directions instead of running empty in one direction.
The short version being - crude oil isn't a single monolithic thing. It's different from each well, from each region / country, etc.. We tend to think and talk about crude oil like it's a single commodity - it's really more like 40+ different very similar commodities with varying degrees of substitution among the different flavors.
This link on oilprice will provide a sense of how many different flavors of oil there are:
Oil Price Charts | Oilprice.com
Admittedly - many of the price differences are more about the supply, demand, and transportation in and out of a region for that region's oil and less about the grade / consistency / makeup of the oil.
Anyway, TEXAS by itself has 15 different oils priced on that list
I think I see over 100 different prices / oils on that list - not just the WTI vs Brent 2 biggies that we usually use to talk about oil.
The other major vector for classifying oils is sweet vs. sour.
Petroleum - Classification - Sweet vs SourPetroleum - Classification - Sweet vs Sour
This has to do with the sulfur content, with low sulfur content (sweet) being desirable (typically) for refiners, and about to become more desirable with the marine regulations having to do with sulfur content of the fuel being burned in maritime use becoming regulated in 2020.
EDIT: More reading got me to this page:
Petroleum - Classification - Benchmarks
It indicates there are more than 161 benchmark oils.
On the same site, here's a longer read by people that know what they're talking about, concerning the classification of oil:
Petroleum Classification | what is the clasification of petroleum
