Accelerating energy market analytics through collaboration, networking and alliances
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In a Clubhouse room the other night, angel investor and venture capitalist David Rose suggested that there are three types of entrepreneurs. Type 1: circumstantial entrepreneurs trying to survive and get themselves out of poverty Type 2: natural-born entrepreneurs Type 3: self-made entrepreneurs David goes on to mention that he only invests in Type 2s. He later revealed that Type 2s are hypomanic. A survey of college students revealed that six percent scored high on hypomanic traits. This is ...
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Adaptation - With Changes on the Horizon, Nederland/Beaumont Export Hub Increasing Focus On NGLs
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The Nederland/Beaumont crude oil hub has been somewhat overshadowed recently by other Gulf Coast crude export hubs despite hosting America’s largest refinery, a handful of export terminals and pipeline links to the prolific Permian Basin. But while plans to build one or more deepwater crude export terminals could mean big changes for the Gulf Coast…
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The Waiting - As EPA Bottleneck Grows, CCS Approvals Pick Up Steam in States With Well Primacy
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Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022 was intended to unleash a wave of clean-energy initiatives, from hydrogen and renewable fuels to electric vehicles and large-scale carbon-capture projects, all part of the Biden administration’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and move the U.S. closer to a net-zero economy. …
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Never Been Any Reason, Encore Edition - Why Oil, Gas and NGL Infrastructure Investment is Soaring While Production Growth is Flat
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There’s never been any reason to question the drivers for energy infrastructure development — until now. Historically, the drivers were almost always “supply-push.” The Shale Revolution brought on increasing production volumes that needed to be moved to market, and midstreamers — backed by producer commitments — responded with the infrastructure to…
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Getting Closer - A Drill Down Report on Four Projects Vying to be Next Deepwater Export Terminal
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The four deepwater crude oil export projects under development along the U.S. Gulf Coast are getting closer to receiving their regulatory go-aheads after years of planning and millions of dollars spent. In fact, Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) received its license in April. These projects have sparked commercial and wider market interest …
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Underground - An Update on 'Sweetening' High-H2S, High-CO2 Associated Gas in the Permian
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Some of the most prolific, crude-oil-saturated rock in the Permian’s Delaware Basin and Central Platform comes with a nasty complication — namely, associated gas with very high levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2). But rather than walking away from all those potential barrels, one midstream company saw the treatment of high-H2S…
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Save It For Later - Catalyst Recycling Gains as Refiners Focus on Profitability, Environmental Performance
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Refinery distillation units separate crude oil into light, medium and heavy fractions. After that, refiners start performing chemical reactions using catalysts — materials that accelerate chemical reactions — to change the oil’s natural molecules into the forms needed in modern fuels. In recent years, refiners have stepped up their efforts to recyc…
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Hot Fun in the Summertime - Texas, California Summertime Power Prices Moving in Opposite Directions
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Texas and California are opposites in many ways, including their expectations for power prices in the summer ahead. Texas set single-day demand records several times last year and is anticipating more sizzling temperatures — and higher power prices — this year with demand expected to be near available supply. It’s the opposite for California, where…
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Shout (Let It All Out) - U.S. To Shut Northeast Gasoline Reserve After 10 Years, But Will Anyone Miss It?
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The March appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by President Biden to fund the federal government mandated the emptying of the federal gasoline reserve in fiscal year 2024, which concludes September 30, followed by its eventual closure. That means about 1 MMbbl — 42 MM gallons — of gasoline will find its way to the market in the next fe…
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Upside Down - Renewable Diesel Market Unsettled by Drop in Government Subsidies
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The federal Renewable Identification Number (RIN) and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) have long served as tools to force renewable fuels like ethanol into the U.S. fuel supply. They are environmental credits that subsidize production of renewable fuels that would not otherwise be economically justified. Nuances embedded in the design o…
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Deeper Bluewater - Phillips 66, Trafigura Continue Pursuit of a Deepwater Port Near Corpus Christi
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Bluewater Texas, proposed by a 50/50 joint venture (JV) of Phillips 66 (P66) and commodity trading giant Trafigura, is in a unique position in the race to construct a deepwater crude oil export facility along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Of the four marketed deepwater proposals, Bluewater is the only project in the export-centric Corpus Christi market. It …
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Call Me By Your Name - Understanding the Lingo is Key to Mastering the Natural Gas Value Chain
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To closely analyze the natural gas market is to be constantly bombarded with vast amounts of information — weather forecasts, pipeline flows, LNG feedgas, power demand and storage — that is frequently updated, impacting both spot and future prices. But before you can get into the deeper analysis, you’ve got to understand the natural gas value chain…
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Devil's in the Details - Relatively Stable Q1 2024 E&P Earnings Shift Analysis to Company Performance
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A macro view of U.S. exploration and production (E&P) company performance over the last quarter century reveals repetitive boom-and-bust cycles driven by periodic extremes in crude oil pricing, including price crashes in 2008, 2014 and 2020. That history contrasts with the remarkable stability in West Texas Intermediate (WTI) realizations since mid…
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We Could Be So Good Together - Push for Scale, Efficiency Drives More Consolidation in the Eagle Ford
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Permian-focused M&A activity may grab all the headlines, but don’t forget about the Eagle Ford. Over the past couple of years, a steady stream of big-dollar deals have been announced in the South Texas shale play, most of them tied to efforts by growth-oriented E&Ps to increase their scale, improve their operational efficiency and expand their inve…
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Dream Baby - Extensive Connectivity Supports Wink's Emergence as a Major Permian Crude Hub
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Situated in West Texas’s Winkler County, the tiny city of Wink (population just under 1,000) might seem easy to overlook but it holds a special place in music history as the childhood home of Roy Orbison — he formed his first band, the Wink Westerners, there in 1949. But beyond its rich musical legacy, Wink in recent years has emerged as a key hub …
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Stranger in Town - Nigeria Turning to U.S. Crudes to Feed Dangote Refinery
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If you asked someone where U.S. crude oil shipments would go when the Obama administration ended the ban on most crude exports in December 2015, it’s not likely that Nigeria would have come to mind. Yet this year marked the second time since the restrictions ended that U.S. oil has been sent to the OPEC member, this time to feed its long-awaited Da…
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Everybody Dance Now - Assessing the ConocoPhillips/Marathon Oil Deal
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Another day, another mega-deal between top-tier oil and gas producers — or so it seems. Now, it’s ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil’s turn, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more logical pairing among the ever-shrinking list of big E&Ps that hadn’t already found a partner during the ongoing frenzy to consolidate. In today’s RBN blog, we examine Con…
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You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet - How Energy Transfer's WTG Midstream Buy Will Add to Its Permian Heft
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Energy Transfer is yet again slaking its acquisition appetite by gobbling up another natural gas gatherer and processor to further expand its already formidable Permian footprint. The company announced May 28 that it has struck a $3.25 billion cash-and-stock deal to buy WTG Midstream, a West Texas-based and private equity-backed operator whose Perm…
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Never Let Me Down - Pembina Inks Ethane Supply Deal with Dow's Alberta Ethane Cracker Expansion
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With an announcement in late 2023 by Dow Chemical that it would be undertaking an enormous expansion of its ethylene production site in Fort Saskatchewan, AB, it was immediately clear that Alberta’s ethane supplies would need to increase by a significant 110 Mb/d. As we’ll discuss in today’s RBN blog, a deal was signed in February between Dow and P…
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You Don't Know Me - There's A Lot More Happening in the Bakken Than You Might Think
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On the surface, the Bakken story in the mid-2020s may seem as boring as dirt. The boom times of 2009-14 and 2017-19 are ancient history. Crude oil production has been rangebound near 1.2 MMb/d — well below its peak five years ago. And that output has been getting gassier over time, creating natural gas and NGL takeaway constraints that have put a l…
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Piece by Piece - Phillips 66 Expands Permian Natgas/NGL Network With Pinnacle Midstream Deal
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Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were the large, wellhead-to-market natural gas and NGL networks that Phillips 66 and a handful of other midstream empires have assembled — many of them targeting the all-important Permian. Now, P66 has reached an agreement to acquire Pinnacle Midstream, whose associated gas gathering system and gas processing …
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Houston (Means I'm One Day Closer to You) - Deepwater Port Could Bolster Houston’s Status as Oil Hub
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The Houston crude oil hub has become busier over the last few months, and if one or more proposals to build a deepwater export terminal nearby capable of fully loading a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) cross the finish line, it could become the hub supplying them. That could push Permian Basin oil flows on Houston-bound pipelines higher at the expe…
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Never Been Any Reason - Why Oil, Gas and NGL Infrastructure Investment is Soaring While Production Growth is Flat
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There’s never been any reason to question the drivers for energy infrastructure development — until now. Historically, the drivers were almost always “supply-push.” The Shale Revolution brought on increasing production volumes that needed to be moved to market, and midstreamers — backed by producer commitments — responded with the infrastructure to…
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Different 'Round Here - Energy Transfer Takes Unconventional Approach With Blue Marlin Project
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Energy Transfer, which is championing its Blue Marlin Offshore Platform (BMOP), may have been the last developer to pursue its critical deepwater export license, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the hunt. Of the four offshore crude oil export projects, BMOP stands out as the sole brownfield initiative, which should hold down costs and expedite its…
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Up Around the Bend - Permian Gas Processing Plans Hint at Impending Rebound in Production
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Permian production may have plateaued over the past few months — the shale play’s crude oil output has bounced between 6 MMb/d and 6.3 MMb/d for almost a year now, and natural gas production has hovered around 18 Bcf/d for about as long. But producer-backed plans to continue adding gas processing capacity in the Permian’s Delaware and Midland basin…
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Like A Rock - E&P Balance Sheets Remain Strong Despite Challenging Economic Conditions
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The transition of U.S. E&Ps to capital discipline has led to historic shareholder returns and won back legions of investors who had virtually abandoned the industry until a few years ago. But while it might be tempting to conclude producers must finally have their financial houses in good order, a lot of us have witnessed a few boom-and-bust cycles…
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Only the Strong Survive - U.S. Clean Ammonia Projects Inch Forward, But Some May Falter
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Rising global interest in clean ammonia — plus the potential for earning generous federal tax credits — spurred a host of project announcements over the past couple of years, with the first new production capacity slated to start up as soon as 2025. But reality is setting in regarding the pace of clean-ammonia demand growth and the financial, regul…
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Storm Front - As Data Centers Proliferate, Utilities Turn to Gas-Fired Power to Meet Demand
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The growing number of energy-intensive data centers coming online across the U.S. is spurring utilities to ramp up their plans for adding new sources of power generation — including a slew of gas-fired plants — and also complicating their efforts to rely more on renewable resources and decarbonize the power grid. The push to quickly develop new ene…
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All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down - Why Permian Production Growth Is Slowing
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For the past decade, producers in the Permian Basin have been the driving force in domestic production growth, but lately there has been a hard-to-miss slowdown in incremental production rates for crude, gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs). While Permian producers are primarily motivated by crude oil economics, those volumes also come with a lot of …
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Strange Bedfellows - New Pipe Will Upend Permian NGL Flows to Non-Belvieu Markets - Again
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For years, the South Texas NGL market was a world of its own — a self-contained liquids ecosystem centered around the refineries and petrochemical plants in the Corpus Christi area. But that all changed about six years ago when EPIC Midstream built a new NGL pipeline from the Permian into Corpus and a new fractionator to process those liquids. Corp…
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Upside Down - Feedstock Choices, Subsidies Can Significantly Swing Renewable Diesel Margins
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How can a business survive and thrive while spending $5.30 to make a product that sells for $1.90? That’s what’s happening in the booming renewable diesel (RD) market, where government subsidies allow RD to compete directly with petroleum diesel even though RD is inherently more costly to produce. But as new plants keep coming on stream, RD profit …
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Corpus Christi Bay - How Deepwater Crude Export Projects May Impact Corpus Pipelines, Terminals
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The Corpus Christi crude oil market is pulling as much volume as it can from the Permian Basin via pipelines that are running nearly at capacity. That explains why two midstream companies are responding with plans to boost the capacities of their respective pipelines from the Permian to refineries and export terminals in the Corpus area. But the si…
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Look What You Made Me Do - Cut in Mexican Crude Exports Has U.S. Refiners Looking for Alternatives
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Mexico’s efforts to start up the newest addition to its refining system — the Olmeca refinery — are causing headaches for global buyers of its crudes. Few are convinced that the plant near the country’s key Dos Bocas oil port is ready for service. Yet its operator, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), surprised many with cuts to its crude exports in April,…
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Slow Down - Combination of Factors Pull U.S. Crude Oil Exports Back From Record Highs
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The U.S. has become an oil-exporting powerhouse in recent years, propelled by booming shale production, notably from the Permian Basin. U.S. crude oil now flows more freely than ever to help meet global demand, including to Europe, which increasingly turned to the U.S. following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two-plus years ago, but exports have slow…
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Replace Me - E&Ps' 2023 Organic Reserve Replacement Metrics Weaken, Spurring M&A Consolidation
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U.S. E&Ps’ dramatic strategic shift from prioritizing growth to focusing on cash flow generation and shareholder returns has resulted in more earnings-call talk about dividends and share buybacks and less discussion about efforts to replenish and build their proven oil and gas reserves — a critically important factor in establishing company value. …
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Almost There - Nigeria's Dangote Refinery Likely Facing A Long, Slow Ramp-up
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The new 650-Mb/d Dangote refinery in Nigeria instantly became Africa’s largest and the world’s seventh-largest by capacity when it finally began processing crude into diesel and aviation fuels in January after years of delays and cost overruns. Long touted as Nigeria’s ticket to ending refined fuels imports by supplying its own markets — with plent…
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Thinking Out Loud - What Might Be the Timing and Scope of the Ramp Up of Gas into LNG Canada?
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LNG Canada, under construction for nearly six years on Canada’s West Coast, is rapidly approaching the time when first gas will be entering the plant for testing and calibration of equipment, marking an important transformation for the Western Canadian natural gas market. This will kick off what will likely be about a yearlong testing process befor…
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When Worlds Collide - U.S. Gulf Coast Refiners Face Challenges to Accessing Heavier Crude Oil
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The prospect of decreased crude oil supplies from Mexico, the top international supplier to the U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC), is creating uncertainty among heavy crude-focused refineries. Mexico’s state-owned energy company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), instructed its trading unit to cancel up to 436 Mb/d of crude exports for April to supposedly focus on…
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Glimpse of the Future - Upcoming W2W Maintenance Will Tighten Permian Oil Takeaway, Wreak Havoc on Prices
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The largest crude oil pipeline exiting the Permian Basin by volume — Wink to Webster (W2W) — is planned to be offline for maintenance for the first 10 days of June. This is inclusive of Enterprise’s Midland-to-ECHO III (ME III), which reflects the company’s 29% undivided joint interest in W2W. Although the outage has not been publicly confirmed, it…
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You Light Up My Life - Long-Duration Energy Storage to Play Critical Role in Renewables Buildout, Grid Reliability
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The intermittent nature of renewable energy is a well-documented thorn in the side of efforts to decarbonize the power grid, especially with more wind and solar generation coming online every year. But while those sources of clean energy are not available all the time, it’s also true that they can sometimes produce more power than transmission line…
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China In Your Hand - Evolving LNG Market Could Mean Major Changes for China's Big Three
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China regained its place as the world’s largest LNG importer in 2023, a title it lost in 2022 due to COVID-related shutdowns. Given that China only started importing LNG in 2006, the country’s demand growth — imports last year totaled 71.3 million metric tons (~9.5 Bcf/d), just under 18% of globally traded demand — can only be described as spectacu…
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Dark Horse - Sentinel Midstream's Texas GulfLink Emerges as Serious Contender in Export Terminal Race
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In the race to build the next deepwater crude oil export terminal in the Gulf of Mexico, Sentinel Midstream’s proposed Texas GulfLink (TGL) is currently in second place in the regulatory race, behind only Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) — and seems to be emerging as a serious contender. The plan offers some compelling attributes, includin…
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Oceanfront Property - Gauging the Promise of the Newly Announced DeLa Pipeline
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Moss Lake Partners has announced plans to build a massive 42-inch pipeline known as the DeLa Express to take up to 2 Bcf/d of wet gas 690 miles from the Permian across the Texas state line into Louisiana. It’s an audacious plan, and there’s little doubt that a new natural gas pipeline from the Permian to the Gulf Coast is needed to facilitate conti…
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This Must Be the Place - Enbridge Expands Corpus Christi Assets to Bolster Crude Exports
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Enbridge’s recent $200 million deal to buy two marine docks and land in Ingleside, TX, from Flint Hills Resources (FHR) may not be much of a surprise, as expanding its role in U.S. crude exports has been part of Enbridge’s strategy since it bought Moda Midstream’s big marine terminal next door nearly three years ago. The former Moda terminal, now k…
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If You've Got the Money, Honey - Investors Rewarded with Strong Returns Despite Dip in E&P Cash Flows
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As we’ve frequently chronicled, 2022 was a golden year for U.S. exploration and production (E&P) companies and their investors, as soaring commodity prices triggered record cash generation to fund the highest levels of shareholder returns of any American industry. But Camelot didn’t last forever, and the twin impacts of lower hydrocarbon prices and…
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Upside Down - Renewable Diesel Boom Sets Off Aftershocks in Soybean Oil, Used Cooking Oil Markets
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The boom in renewable diesel (RD) production has triggered a race to secure the dozen different bio-feedstocks suitable for refining into diesel fuel. It’s an interesting story that impacts both the oil and agriculture industries, with twists and turns that will take years to play out. In today's RBN blog, we describe the current state of the marke…
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Here I Go Again - Pemex's Dos Bocas Refinery Still Facing the Startup Blues
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One of the most anticipated and potentially impactful refinery startups in North America in years is the Dos Bocas project (officially the Olmeca Refinery), a 340 Mb/d plant under development by Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in the southeastern state of Tabasco. The project was seen as the cornerstone of Pemex’s plans to reduce M…
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Texas Hold 'Em - Permian Pipeline Takeaway Constraints Loom As Basin's Oil Output Grows
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Crude oil output in the Permian Basin is now averaging 6.3 MMb/d, up about 400 Mb/d from year-ago levels and 800 Mb/d from April 2022. The gains — and related increases in associated gas — have spurred a new round of concerns about pipeline exit capacity, complicating drillers’ hopes to boost crude production. In today’s RBN blog, we will discuss t…
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Take Me to the Water - New JV's Focus Is Moving Permian Natural Gas to LNG Export Terminals
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The U.S. may be in a monthslong pause in approving new LNG exports but that doesn’t change the fact that U.S. LNG export capacity will nearly double over the next four years, that most of the new liquefaction plants are being built along the Texas coast, and that their primary source of natural gas will be the Permian Basin. That helps to explain w…
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(The EPA) Drives Me Crazy - New U.S. Rule on Tailpipe Emissions Conflicts With Energy Reality
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The Biden administration recently announced a very ambitious — to say the least — rule on tailpipe emissions. But while the rule’s legal and political standing might be a bit uncertain — it’s seen by many as a de facto ban on conventionally fueled cars and trucks and is likely to face several court challenges — doubts also remain about whether it m…
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