The North American energy landscape has undergone significant shifts in production, infrastructure and pricing for crude oil, natural gas and NGLs over the past few years and developments within Canada have strengthened its role in the global energy trade, creating opportunities and reshaping supply chains. Yet, the market is constantly changing and today geopolitics and the potential impact of tariffs weigh heavily on the relationship between Canada and the U.S., North America’s two producing heavyweights. That shifting landscape is the subject of today’s RBN blog and a topic we’ll be discussing at our upcoming School of Energy Canada, set for August 26-27 in Calgary. Fair warning, this blog includes an unabashed advertorial for the conference.
Daily Energy Blog
Huge fees may be coming to ships built in China each time they arrive at a U.S. port. During a hearing in Washington on Monday, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) heard comments on its January 2025 study that laid out China’s strategy to achieve dominance in the global maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors — a strategy that has worked spectacularly. Since 1999, China’s share of the global shipbuilding market has soared from 5% to 50%. The USTR argues that China’s growing control over the maritime sector poses serious economic and national security risks to the U.S., making immediate action necessary. Proposed measures include imposing port fees from $1 million to $1.5 million per port entry. If implemented, the fees would substantially increase costs for exports and imports using Chinese ships. That could have incredibly disruptive impacts on most oceangoing transport, and energy products are no exception — unless they get an exception! In today’s RBN blog, we explore the background of the USTR’s China port-fee proposal and what it could mean for global energy logistics.
The Trump administration announced on February 26 that it is ending Chevron’s permit to operate in oil-rich Venezuela, which will halt U.S. imports of Venezuelan crude by early April. These changes, combined with other recent developments, are likely to significantly impact complex U.S. Gulf Coast refiners relying on heavy crude. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these impacts — an issue our Refined Fuels Analytics (RFA) practice examined in its recently updated Future of Fuels report.
Globally, government policies have shifted away from petroleum in recent years toward lower-carbon alternatives such as renewable fuels and electric vehicles (EVs), largely driven by worries about climate change. This has pushed down investment in petroleum refining, and RBN’s Refined Fuels Analytics (RFA) practice predicts global net refining capacity will increase by only 2.1 MMb/d, or 422 Mb/d annually, from 2025-29 — the slowest rate in 30 years. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the upcoming refinery closures, proposed projects, and the obstacles new and existing refiners face.
A primary objective of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) implemented in 2007 was to stimulate the production of at least 16 billion gallons/year of gasoline and diesel made from cellulosic biomass, or non-food crops and waste biomass like corn stalks, corncobs, straw, wood, wood byproducts and animal manure. But the vision of making gasoline from wood chips never materialized and today’s cellulosic biofuel is a whole different ballgame. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the evolution of cellulosic biofuels and the D3 Renewable Identification Number, aka the D3 RIN.
The looming threat of a 10% tariff on U.S. imports of Canadian crude oil hasn’t just angered Canadians — and understandably so, we might add. It’s also put a spotlight on PADD 2 — the Midwest/Great Plains region — whose pipelines transport the vast majority of Canadian exports and whose 25 refineries (combined capacity 4.3 MMb/d) are, in many cases, significant consumers of heavy and light crudes from up north. Put simply, to assess the impacts of the still-possible trade war on U.S. refiners and producers on both sides of the border, you need to understand PADD 2’s crude oil supply/demand balance and the options Midwestern refineries that currently run Canadian crude would have if a tariff were put in place. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these dynamics.
After successfully reducing emissions of pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen, the global shipping industry now is focused on ratcheting down — and eventually eliminating — its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). It’s no easy task. Crude-oil-based bunker like low-sulfur fuel oil (LSFO) and marine gas oil (MGO) are readily available, relatively inexpensive, and pack a lot of energy into each gallon. But GHG-reduction goals are in place, both globally and in the European Union (EU), and shipping companies are taking steps to meet them, initially with more LNG-fueled vessels and later with ships powered by clean methanol, clean ammonia and biofuels. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the shift in bunker fuel consumption since IMO 2020 was implemented five years ago and the efforts to transition to even cleaner shipping fuels through the late 2020s and beyond.
The bitter, eight-year legal battle over the fate of CITGO Petroleum’s three U.S. refineries, related pipelines and terminal assets appeared to be at an end last fall, when a federal court gave the green light to Elliott Investment Management’s Amber Energy to purchase the assets for $7.3 billion. But instead of putting an end to the drama, the court restarted the bidding from scratch on December 18. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss what the court’s ruling means for CITGO and its refineries, which have a combined capacity of more than 800 Mb/d.
U.S. energy policy was at the heart of the 2024 presidential campaign in more ways than one. Many voters cited economic concerns in their decision to return President Trump to the White House, with energy costs top of mind, but U.S. energy policy impacts everything from domestic manufacturing and decarbonization efforts to resource development and international trade. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the executive orders issued by Trump on the first day of his second term and how they fit into his plan for the U.S. to exert “energy dominance.”
Are you ready for Trumpian turmoil? Regardless of your opinion of the president, you’ve got to acknowledge he’ll be shaking things up. In fact, with talk of a tariff blitz poised to disrupt global trade, mass deportations on deck, notions like reclaiming the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and even annexing Canada, the turmoil is already well underway. And of course, energy markets will be front and center, with “Drill, baby, drill” the stated oil and gas policy du jour. With so much uncertainty ahead, it’s impossible to predict what will happen in 2025, right? Nah. All we need to do is stick out our collective RBN necks one more time, peer into our crystal ball, and see what the new year has in store for us.
Alaska North Slope (ANS) crude oil production has been sliding for years — decades really — but that is poised to change in the second half of the 2020s. Two long-planned ANS projects — Pikka and Willow — are slated to start up in 2026 and 2029, respectively. By the early 2030s, these and other projects in the works could return North Slope production to levels not seen since the turn of the century. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these projects and our new, long-term forecast for ANS oil production — a topic in our upcoming Future of Fuels report.
Are you ready for Trumpian turmoil? Regardless of your opinion of the president-elect, you’ve got to acknowledge he’ll be shaking things up. In fact, with talk of a tariff blitz poised to disrupt global trade, mass deportations on deck, notions like reclaiming the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and even annexing Canada, the turmoil is already well underway. And of course, energy markets will be front and center, with “Drill, baby, drill” the stated oil and gas policy du jour. With so much uncertainty ahead, it’s impossible to predict what will happen in 2025, right? Nah. All we need to do is stick out our collective RBN necks one more time, peer into our crystal ball, and see what the new year has in store for us.
As 2023 wrapped up one year ago, it seemed there were a lot of moving parts out there in energy markets. Capacity constraints were back on the radar screen, and while prices appeared stable, they were overshadowed by the looming threat of escalating conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Opportunities abounded for energy projects, including natural gas storage, export terminals, and just about any pipeline that moved supply to the Gulf Coast. However, challenges kept popping up, from project delays like those faced by Canada’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX) to concerns about excessive nitrogen in Permian natural gas and what eventually evolved into the Biden administration's LNG “pause.”
Many of this year’s most popular RBN blogs gravitated toward familiar energy market themes — rising exports, shifts in oil production, weak natural gas prices, surprising NGL pricing dynamics and the like. However, we also noted a significant uptick in interest in topics beyond the traditional energy realm, including hydrogen, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), electric vehicles (EVs) and even the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers. It’s not that RBNers have shifted their focus away from oil, gas and NGL markets. Rather, it reflects a growing recognition that the renewable and alternative energy landscape — fueled by regulations, subsidies and tax incentives — is reshaping the energy world. For anyone in the energy business, staying one step ahead (or maybe three steps) means understanding how these trends intersect with traditional energy markets. In 2024, our readers made it clear: The interplay between renewable and conventional energy commodities is becoming increasingly important.
A primary objective of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), when it was expanded back in 2007, was to stimulate by 2022 the production of at least 16 billion gallons/year of gasoline and diesel made from cellulosic biomass in conversion plants resembling small refineries. After getting lots of headlines in the early days of renewable fuels, that vision faded into the background and attention shifted to the use of ethanol in gasoline and the production of diesel from soybean oil, but cellulosic biofuels — non-food crops and waste biomass like animal manure, corn cobs, corn stalks, straw and wood chips — are back in the spotlight thanks to a regulatory quirk. In today’s RBN blog, the first in a series, we review the unusual history of the D3 Renewable Identification Number (RIN), the subsidy designed to stimulate cellulosic biofuel production, and the recent impact on heavy-duty trucking.
