U.S. crude production continued to recover on Thursday after a winter storm ravaged production and losses peaked at 2 million barrels per day over the weekend, while analysts adjusted output forecasts for January in the aftermath of outages.
Nearly all of North Dakota’s production was back online, Justin Kringstad, director of North Dakota Pipeline Authority said on Thursday. North Dakota is the third-largest oil-producing U.S. state, and output totaled 1.189 million bpd in November, the latest monthly data from the state Industrial Commission showed.
Total U.S. crude and condensate production is set to fall on average this month by 340,000 bpd, with risks skewed towards a greater decline if recovery proves slower than anticipated, JPMorgan analysts said in a note on Thursday.
U.S. crude output, not including condensate, was forecast to total 13.76 million bpd in January, according to the Energy Information Administration earlier this month.
U.S. crude exports have rebounded after no loadings took place on Sunday, said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler.
Crude exports have averaged 3.2 million bpd over the last three days, and are set to finish on a weekly basis at a lower pace than usual, potentially at around 3 million bpd rather than the typical 4 million bpd, Smith said.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston; Editing by Liz Hampton and Nia Williams)