Oil Rig Count
The first piece of good news closing out this week has been reported by Oilprice.com states,”Baker Hughes reported a 10-rig increase to the number of oil and gas rigs this week. The total number of oil and gas rigs now stands at 1003, which is an addition of 164 rigs year over year.”
Considering the past few years have been extremely hard on our industry as a whole, this is certainly welcome news. Luckily, we have an amazing amount of intellect in the energy realm and some of these great minds have figured out ways to bring efficiency, profitability and environmental safety to the table, allowing the industry to steadily prosper.
Oil Exports
Our exporting process has gained a leg up and according to this recent Forbes article, “In November 2017, domestic crude oil production reached its highest level in U.S. history. International trade in crude oil and petroleum products is booming with exports of 6.6 million and imports of 10.3 million barrels per day in January 2018.”
President Trump’s Park Restoration Plan
Our President recently came up with a proposition to help restore and repair national and local parks. He met with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and stated, “I think if you’re going to gain resource and wealth from public lands, then a fair proposition is, you should also contribute to the maintenance backlog and preservation of those lands,”. Whether this will come to fruition or not is still to be seen.
The Looming Trade War
Oil and Gas Investor recently released an article explaining, “U.S. energy companies added oil rigs for the third time in four weeks as crude prices drifted from a three-year high hit earlier this year amid concerns of a trade war between U.S. and China.” We don’t believe the “looming trade war” is going to materialize because we’ve done our research and have come to the conclusion that the mainstream media tends to take these situations and over-analyze them to gain readership and views online. If the tariffs do end up going into effect, they will take down many companies (even with as little as a 10% increase in steel/industrial shipping taxes and costs). We don’t believe the President has it in his interest to allow our U.S.-based companies to suffer and dissolve in the face of these proposed tariffs.
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