The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $2.57 on Sunday, 28 cents lower than a year ago. That decline has been a boon to consumers, giving them extra spending power that has helped retailers and restaurants. An increase in prices to last year’s levels is possible over the next few weeks unless the Saudi facility is quickly fixed, energy analysts said.
Only a decade ago, the attack would probably have sent oil prices soaring. But that was before American oil production climbed with the shale drilling frenzy. The United States now produces roughly 12.1 million barrels a day, double what it produced in 2012 and 1.4 million barrels more than only a year ago.
The United States imports about 630,000 barrels of Saudi oil a day, down about half from 2017.
American oil companies have recently been cutting back on production, but higher oil prices would encourage them to produce more. At the same time, several pipelines to the Gulf Coast are nearing completion and that could stimulate significant export growth over the next six to 10 months.
Other oil-producing countries are also ramping up production, including Norway and Brazil, while Iraq, Nigeria and Russia have been producing a total of 650,000 barrels of oil above the levels agreed to with their OPEC partners.
The United States and other developed countries have nearly 3 billion barrels in stockpiles, according to the International Energy Agency, enough to take care of about two months of demand. That is about 50 million barrels above a year ago, despite American sanctions on Iran and Venezuela that have constricted their exports.
The stockpiles of the industrialized countries are at their highest level since September 2017, and are nearly 20 million barrels above the average of the last five years, according to the energy agency.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/business/saudi-arabia-oil-energy-prices.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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