The first three months of a presidency that promised to put ‘America first’ and potentially impose trade barriers on friend and foe alike, has seen previous records of oil trade blown out of the water.
Record volumes of crude exports – some 928,000 b/d in February and 802,000 b/d for Q1 as a whole – have grabbed the headlines. But exports of refined products (3.02mn b/d), NGLs (1.40mn b/d) and biofuels (530,000 b/d) were all at or near record quarterly levels. All told the US exported 5.75mn b/d in Q1, up 400,000 b/d on the previous record set in Q2 last year (see chart 1 and MEES, 23 December 2016). (CONTINUED - 610 WORDS)
