Crude Oil Exports Boom, Barrels Break Through 2025 Average

After a long decline, crude oil production on Alaska’s North Slope is poised to increase, and it’s possible that by the early 2030s production could return to levels not seen since the turn of the century. It’s an exciting development for the 49th state, but where will all that oil go? With refining capacity on the decline in California, which has typically handled a lot of Alaska North Slope (ANS) crude, it’s not an easy answer. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the locations where ANS oil production could land — one of the many essential topics covered in our upcoming Future of Fuels report. 

The Biden administration said last Friday it would help ensure deliveries of an additional 15 billion cubic meters (Bcm) of LNG to the European Union (EU) market in 2022. A frenzy of media articles followed and the targeted increase was widely cited. The April CME/NYMEX Henry Hub futures contract rallied nearly 3% to $5.55/MMBtu on Friday, and the stock price for Cheniere Energy, the largest LNG producer in the U.S., jumped 5.5% the same day. But U.S. liquefaction facilities have already been running full tilt and sending record volumes to Europe. So, what does the news really mean for U.S. LNG exports and the domestic gas market? In today’s RBN blog, we put that 15 Bcm in perspective and distill the key takeaways for U.S. LNG production.

Any number of things can impact the price of specific types of crude oil at various locations — supply interruptions, takeaway constraints and refinery outages, to name just a few. Every so often, the stars align and just about all those factors narrow the differential between, say, Western Canadian Select (WCS) and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at the U.S. Gulf Coast to near-record levels. Well, that’s happening now, for the first time in five years. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the shockingly small WCS/WTI differential and what’s driving it.