Will Venezuela be able to find buyers of its oil to replace customers lost as a result of US sanctions?

At stake is approximately 500,000 barrels per day exported by state-owned PDVSA to US refineries. That’s almost one-half of Venezuelan daily output.

It may feel like ages ago, but a few months back the question raging in the oil market was whether Saudi Arabia had enough spare capacity to prevent the supply crunch about to ensue when US sanctions drove Iranian exports to zero.

The guarded nature surrounding Saudi Arabia’s oil industry only stoked the debate.

Ursa Space Systems, Inc. (Ursa) and SI Imaging Services (SIIS) have signed a multi-year contract, establishing Ursa’s continued access to KOMPSAT 5 radar satellite imagery, distributed exclusively by SIIS.

A few of us traveled this week to attend the Argus Americas Crude Summit. Ursa was one of the conference sponsors.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port holds the enviable title as the only US facility capable of fully loading a supertanker with crude.

US crude exports have boomed since legal restrictions on exports were lifted in late 2015. The supply of light, sweet crude far exceeds the demand by domestic refiners, many of which were configured to run on heavy, sour barrels.

LOOP began to fully load supertankers in February. An average loading is roughly 2 million barrels per VLCC.

The biggest question in the oil market is whether some of the biggest oil producers in the world will follow through with pledged output cuts -- causing the global oil market to tighten.

2018 was a big year for Ursa!

Early in the year we launched our Oil Storage product for all regions in the world, helping us provide the best-in-class global dataset of the world's crude oil supply. We also launched our Ursa Data Portal, a one-stop shop for users to quickly perform custom analyses of the areas that are most important to them in an interactive and beautiful page. Throughout the year we've also made innumerable enhancements to strengthen our core and future offerings.

US oil inventories provide fundamental insight. Comparing stocks against the five-year average was part of the analysis, but historic builds have distorted that figure for the time being.

Back in August, this blog shortlisted the Permian Basin bottleneck as a candidate for story-of-the-year in the oil market. With 2018 drawing to a close, we think this prediction has held up pretty well.

A major issue lurking in the background came to the fore, which was the pipeline capacity -- or lack thereof -- connecting the Permian with Cushing, Oklahoma and Houston.