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The sharp decline in oil demand from China due to the coronavirus is causing oil cargoes to be stranded off the country’s coast and across Asia.  Last week, OPEC lowered its forecast for global oil demand by nearly a quarter million barrels per day as the pandemic of the coronavirus has crippled fuel consumption in China.  Demand from China, the world’s largest importer of oil, has dropped by three million barrels per day which is twenty percent of Chinese consumption.

The United States has significantly ramped up oil production over the past decade, but just how far have they come?  Depending on how you view oil production, the U.S. has just become a net oil exporter for the first time in 70 years.  Bloomberg describes the U.S. as a net petroleum exporter, but Forbes is quick to point out that this includes both crude oil and finished products, as opposed to just crude oil.

A recent survey conducted by Reuters found that OPEC oil output has dropped during the month of November from October by 110,000 barrels per day (bpd). The cause is from Angola Production fell due to maintenance, along with Saudi Arabia halted supply output before the initial public offering of state-owned Saudi Aramco.

A growing number of companies are “running” to build export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason for this growth is an excess amount of oil in the ports of Houston and Corpus Christi. Deepwater crude export terminals are needed from the thriving Permian Basin. Requiring billions of dollars of investment, they would stretch from Brownsville, Texas to southeastern Louisiana. “The congestion is shifting from the Permian Basin to the Gulf Coast,” said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at investment research firm Morningstar. “There’s lots of traffic that these offshore terminals can sort of bypass.”