Headquartered in Houston, Enstor Gas is the largest privately owned natural gas storage company in the U.S. including six active underground natural gas storage facilities with more than 110 Bcf in working gas capacity.
“The IEA was embarrassed by the [U.S.] release which was at the start done essentially unilaterally by the U.S.,” said a source familiar with the diplomacy around the release.
“Strong exports have been driven by a pull to Europe and we should expect strength in the weeks ahead,” said Matt Smith, lead Americas analyst at Kpler.
“The acceleration higher is mainly due to some late winter weather, low storage levels, higher demand for LNG shown by exports and some industrial demand,” said Thomas Saal, senior vice president for energy at StoneX Financial Inc.
Analyst estimates for a shortfall vary, but are anticipated to fall between 1 million and 3 million bbl/d. U.S. oil production is rising, but it will not grow swiftly enough to offset all of those losses, according to the EIA.
“I think it’s extremely cowboy-ish ... by doing an outright sale, purely thinking like a trader, if I did that I would get fired. Nobody knows which way the oil price will go,” said Ilia Bouchouev, partner at Pentathlon Investments and adjunct professor at NYU.
“Crude oil is not showing any sign of slowing down. Domestic production is at a COVID-era high,” said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.
The first 90 million barrels of SPR oil will be released between May and July. The other 90 million barrels will be released between August and October, the Energy Department said.
The oil release would increase supplies by 1 million bbl/d for six months and help market rebalance this year, but it does not resolve the structural supply deficit, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note.
U.S. crude is attractive to world buyers because it is trading at a steep discount of nearly $7 under the global benchmark Brent.