It’s time! Registration for RBN’s *Summer* School of Energy is open. Once again RBN Energy is offering an intense curriculum of energy market fundamentals analysis covering the whys and hows of the most important developments in the crude oil, natural gas and NGL markets. This time the course is hot. Really hot. Because we are holding the conference in the middle of July in Houston. And we’ve expanded the content to include an optional Preschool that consists of a half-day deep dive into the (hot) condensate markets, and another half day for a tour of (very hot) Mont Belvieu. There is more - much more that we’ll review below. And BTW, if this sounds like an unabashed commercial for our conference, that’s because it is. You have been warned!
School of Energy Premise
The basic premise for School of Energy follows the same theme we write about each day in the Daily Energy Post – the relationships between the energy commodities are changing….such that the markets for natural gas, NGLs and crude oil are tied together in ways we’ve never seen before. What happens in gas impacts NGLs, which influences crude oil, which loops back to the natural gas market. As we’ve said frequently, there was a time when you could live out your career in the gas business, or the NGL business, or the crude business and get by with knowing very little about the other hydrocarbon markets. Those days are gone forever. School of Energy is designed to integrate your knowledge of these three commodities with hands-on, practical instruction and training. In each of five ‘blocks’ we’ll drill down on an important aspect of the market, explain how it works, download spreadsheet models and learn how to use them. You’ll walk out the door with the ‘how-to’ PowerPoints and the Excel models on your hard drive. No talking heads, no mind numbing speeches. Just practical, usable energy market fundamentals. See the School of Energy brochure for detailed course content and syllabus.
Where and When
*Summer* School of Energy will be held at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel & Convention Center, 1601 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands, TX on July 11 and 12, 2013. As described below, there is also an optional ‘Preschool’ on July 10.
Bigger and Better
To give you a sense of the value of School of Energy, we’ve attached some of the comments that we received after the February course at the end of this email. But never wanting to sit on our laurels, we’ve made several important additions to the School curriculum:
- Like last time, the coursework itself covers a full day on Day 1 and a half day on Day 2. However, this time we’ll host an optional two hour lab on the afternoon of Day 2 to give you the opportunity to work directly with the faculty doing hands-on model exercises.
- Yes, the rumor that has been making the rounds is true. RBN will host the first 100 registrants at *Summer* School of Energy at the Lynyrd Skynyrd & Bad Co concert on the evening of July 11th at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, Woodlands, TX. (It is just next door to the Marriott Convention Center.) We are always finding ways of weaving Rock & Roll together with energy markets, and we figure there is no better way to do that than with these two awesome bands. When the tickets are gone, they are gone. So register early!
- We had two frequent suggestions after the February session. One was to include more content about condensates. The other was to offer a tour of Mont Belvieu, the center of the NGL universe. So we are going to do both. There is not enough time to get these additions in during the two days scheduled for the School, so we are having Preschool on July 10.
Condensate Deep-Dive and Mont Belvieu Tour: Preschool
RBN Preschool is certainly not an introductory course. In fact, the morning session is a deep dive in to the market for condensates. Over the past two years, the volume of wellhead/lease condensates and plant condensates (natural gasoline) has been increasing rapidly – mostly from the Eagle Ford but increasingly from other shale plays around the country. All this super-light and high RVP material (a.k.a., hot stuff!) has been causing havoc with refiners and pipeliners alike. In a three hour session on Wednesday, July 10 we will examine supply, demand, logistics and other aspects of the evolving market for condensates, both within the U.S. and beyond.
Then we’ll all pile on a bus and head out to Mont Belvieu. As we’ve discussed many times in the RBN blogosphere, Mont Belvieu is a small town east of Houston that is the center of the NGL universe. Over 70% of NGL fractionation capacity is in the general vicinity of Mont Belvieu, as is a major portion of storage and product interchange infrastructure. You can’t really understand it until you see it for yourself. So we’ll get a general tour of the area and an insider’s tour of one of the major facilities.
The Conference
Format is classroom style, similar to our February conference pictured below. You will supply your own computer. So you will need a laptop computer, wireless internet capable, with Microsoft Office 2007 or higher
This is not a course for complete newbies. We assume you have some working knowledge of at least one of the three energy markets we are targeting: crude oil, natural gas or NGLs.
You will have access to both the PowerPoint slides and spreadsheet models used in the coursework in real-time. At the end of the course you will walk away with all of these materials annotated with your own notes taken during the course.
There will be math. But nothing beyond your basic spreadsheet formulas and functions.
Dress code is ‘East Texas Casual’. That means jeans are ok.
