Climateer Investing: Oil and Conspiracies: Saudi Exports to the U.S.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Oil and Conspiracies: Saudi Exports to the U.S.

A couple weeks ago I noted en passant:

We're still looking for another leg down in prices, in part because the Gulf Coast refineries require imported crude (Saudi Aramco didn't build the Motiva facilities to process Bakken light)....

Vis ZeroHedge(buy gold):

A Plot To Hold Down Oil Prices Or Just A Happy Coincidence?

Submitted by Leonard Brecken via OilPrice.com,
The recent unprecedented surge in oil imports has again prompted a review of things here. In a prior story, we wrote that the lack of capacity to process light sweet crude at refineries produced via shale plays could be playing a role in the stock build. As mentioned previously, refineries over the next 24 months are expected to add 700,000 B/D in capacity to handle this type of crude. In the meantime, we have noticed an unusual amount of crude being imported, possibly as a result of this imbalance in refinery capacity. Or could it be that a more sinister plot is afoot?

To quantify the scale of the issue, we turn to Cornerstone Analytics’ work in uncovering the magnitude of the impact of imports on the rise in oil inventory stocks. We haven’t seen this level of import imbalance period since 2013, as the chart below demonstrates via Cornerstone. In the past 6 months, the level of imports relative to the requirement or need by refineries has jumped not once but twice. The 1M B/D “gap” goes a long way in explaining the oil inventory stock build which has been 5MB-10MB per week.

If adjusted, the builds over the past 6 months without such imports would not exist at all or at the very least be greatly reduced. So is this occurring as part of the inability of refineries to handle the mix of output domestically or is this part of some plot to build inventories to crash the prices of oil? Quite frankly we can’t say for sure but anomalies such as this must be exposed so that they can be debated given that there has been ample debate on Saudi motivations for holding down oil prices and the ongoing media cheerleading on lower oil prices....

I'm not sure why but Oilprice seems to have an interest in higher prices, in some of their posts over the last few months they have approached cloud cuckoo land levels of spew.
On the other hand they actually watch the right things in the oil markets so who knows?
Anyhoo, if you want to scapegoat Canuckistan is as guilty as the sheikhs:

Weekly Preliminary Crude Imports by Top 10 Countries of Origin (ranking based on 2013 Petroleum Supply Monthly data)