How OPEC Is Helping U.S. Oil Reach a Tipping Point
https://gcaptain.com/how-opec-is-helping-u-s-oil-reach-a-tipping-point/January 21, 2019
The U.S. Energy Information Administration has published its first detailed monthly oil forecast for 2020 and it shows something that should strike fear into the hearts of OPEC ministers — from the fourth quarter, America will export more oil than it imports.
This won’t make the U.S. independent of the global supply chain. It doesn’t mean that it will stop shipping in crude from the Middle East and Latin America, or bringing refined products from Europe and Asia. But it does show that the transformation of the country’s oil sector through the extraction of crude held in shale rocks is not yet over. Some of the thanks should go the OPEC ministers who have helped make it possible.
The transformation is profound and will mean that members of the OPEC+ group are likely to have to keep restricting their own output for much longer than they are currently planning if they are to avoid global inventories soaring again.
By December 2020, the EIA forecasts that America will be exporting 1.2 million barrels a day more crude and products than it will be importing. Just a decade earlier it was buying in 9.4 million more than it was selling overseas. That is a shift in net flows of more than a million barrels a day each year for a decade.
The U.S. was briefly a net exporter in November, when crude and products exports outstripped imports for a solitary week. That may be repeated intermittently over the course of 2019, but toward the end of next year it is likely to become the norm, rather than a rarity....
