Many factors are weighed before a midstream company commits to building, or a shipper commits to shipping on, a major crude oil pipeline. Where is incremental pipeline capacity needed? What would be the logical origin and terminus for the pipeline? What should the project’s capacity be, and what would be the capital cost of building the project? Where the economic rubber really meets the road is the question of what unit cost––or rate per barrel––would the pipeline developer need to charge to recover its costs and earn a reasonable rate of return on its investment. Today we continue our review of crude oil pipeline economics with a look at the rules-of-thumb for determining what pipeline transportation rates would be.

Natural gas production volumes in the Permian Basin are very near the all-time record of 6.9 Bcf/d set last September, and crude oil and gas producers alike see nothing but blue skies for the highly prolific West Texas/Southeast New Mexico play. The Permian already has a lot of gas processing capacity, but a good bit of it is older, and parts of the region—especially the super-hot Delaware Basin—need more of the big, efficient cryogenic plants that can process 100 to 200 MMcf/d. Today, we continue our review of gas production and processing in the biggest U.S. gas-producing region that is not named Marcellus.

More midstream projects than you might expect are “goin’ on” in the Western Canadian province of Alberta, considering the challenges that bitumen/crude oil and natural gas producers there continue to face. There are several drivers behind the relatively long list of oil and diluent pipelines; gas processing plants and fractionators; and oil/NGL storage facilities being built in Canada’s Energy Province, but much of the work is being done to meet the expected needs of oil-sands expansion projects approved during better times and set to come online soon. Today we begin a blog series on Alberta midstream projects with an overview of where the province’s energy sector stands today.

The ratio of NGL-to-crude oil prices looks like it will be rebounding, and over the next two or three years could rise to levels not seen since the Shale Revolution brought down NGL prices at the end of 2012, a signal that all of the new NGL-consuming petrochemical cracker projects now under construction may not be as lucrative as their developers had once hoped. Several factors are driving the ratio’s rise: increasing U.S. demand for NGLs; more exports; stubbornly low crude oil prices and a lower trajectory of NGL production growth. Today, we examine the historical relationship between NGL and crude oil prices and the reasons why that ratio may be headed back above 50%.

Despite the doom and gloom that many see in the global LNG market –– too much supply, weak demand growth, and low LNG prices –– the possibility remains that the sector may offer the opportunity for low-cost, highly responsive market participants to do quite well, and even thrive. How can that be? After all, we’ve just seen another year of low crude oil prices resulting in very low oil/natural gas margins, and the expectation of high oil/gas margins were critical in supporting the development of many U.S. liquefaction/LNG export projects. But a combination of responsive demand, low cost infrastructure development and the possibility that number of exporting countries could run out of gas at or near the end of their existing contracts could change the outlook for ongoing LNG export development. Today, we look at the LNG market in the context of themes discussed at the North American Gas Forum (NAGF).  Warning: this blog includes a plug for this year’s NAGF conference.

Let’s face it — for producers, the last couple of years have stung, with low-slung energy prices allowing little-to-no returns on drilling investments in most parts of the major shale basins. A side effect of the low price environment in the past two years has been the shrinking geographic footprint of the Shale Revolution. About 50% of all onshore rigs in the Lower 48 currently are clustered in the top 20 counties for drilling activity. In effect, this also means a lot of the new production growth will come primarily from these same 20 counties, with the potential for all sorts of implications for infrastructure and regional price relationships. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at rig counts by county to see how much the geographic focus of the Shale Revolution has narrowed.

Two new 50-Mb/d, Kinder Morgan-owned and -operated condensate splitters came online during the first seven months of 2015, backed by a 10-year BP commitment to process a total of 84 Mb/d through the units. Located in the Houston Ship Channel’s refinery row, the splitters were expected to provide a profitable outlet to process growing volumes of the ultra-light crude oil known as condensate. Instead, average plant throughput through July 2016 has been only 71% of capacity, well below the 90% average operating level of neighboring refineries. The relatively low level at which these units have been operating reflects sagging condensate processing margins. Today, we detail how Kinder Morgan’s new splitters have been run during their first year or so of operation.