The Mystery of America’s Millions of Missing Oil Barrels
The US produces world-class oil data, but there’s a growing chunk of crude that barrel counters can’t account for and it’s making the market hard to read.
An oil barrel
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergHello. In today’s Elements, Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas takes a look at the millions of “missing barrels” that’s making America’s oil industry increasingly hard to read. Oil industry profits, meanwhile, continue to roll in and it’s making President Joe Biden grumpy. If you haven’t yet signed up to get Elements directly into your inbox, you can do that here.
In every oil supply and demand dataset there's a row called something like "adjustment" or "miscellaneous to balance" -- a statistical tool that allows barrel-counters to hammer their numbers so supply and demand fit neatly.