Back to School, Back to School of Energy – With a Full Day Dedicated to Exports

It’s that time again!   Vacation is behind us and it’s time to gather the school supplies and get ready for class.  Of course, we are not talking about high school or college.  If you want to know about energy markets, the campus is the Houstonian in Houston and the class is RBN’s School of Energy, scheduled for September 28, 29 and 30.  This is nothing like other natural gas, crude oil or NGL conferences! The course work is hands-on. In each module we’ll drill down on an important aspect of the market, explain how it works, download a spreadsheet model and learn how to use it. You walk out the door with the how-to Powerpoints and the Excel models on your hard drive.  Warning today’s blog is a blatant commercial for our upcoming Houston conference.    But we hope you will read on, because we have a very special addition this time – a full day dedicated to the export markets. 

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If you are not familiar with RBN’s School of Energy, the conference is structured more like a classroom, where we work through current developments in some aspect of the market and then examine those developments in the context of excel models that grapple with a wide range of issues including production economics, coal versus gas displacement, crack and frac spreads, gas processing economics, ethane rejection, and petrochemical feedstock selection.  These models are similar to what we’ve used in past Schools, except that they have all been updated and upgraded.  Likewise the course content follows the same themes we write about each day in the blog – relationships between 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. And for the first time conference participants will be able to earn CPE credits.

See the School of Energy brochure for detailed course content and syllabus.

The big addition for this School of Energy is about exports.  As you’ve probably followed in the RBN blog, the U.S. has been exporting condensates for over a year. Crude oil export regulations are a hot topic in Washington. Propane exports are at an all-time high. And LNG exports from the Gulf Coast are only a few months away.  For all those reasons we are dedicating the first day of the conference, Monday, September 28 to our Pre-School International Energy Day, focused on U.S. hydrocarbon exports, where they will go and what they will do to global markets when they get there.  We are very pleased that one of the world’s foremost experts in international energy markets, Dr. Fereidun Fesharaki has agreed to participate in the School of Energy International Day.   Dr. Fesharaki is the Founder and Chairman of FACTS Global Energy, a leading consulting group focusing on the oil and gas markets east of the Suez, in Europe, and the U.S.  He will address several of the key issues in the day’s agenda.

Conference Details

RBN’s School of Energy is scheduled for September 28 – 30, 2015 at The Houstonian, 111 North Post Oak Lane Houston, Texas.  Register now and take advantage of the early bird rate for a 13.3% cost savings!   Fees are payable by credit card in US dollars. 

Register for the conference Here 

If you have any questions or need to use another payment method, please email Brenda via [email protected] or call 888-612-9488. Our School of Energy conferences tend to sell out weeks in advance.  Please register early. 

Monday September 28, 2015 is our Pre-School International Energy Day.  We’ll start by covering the new realities of energy markets, where exports are front and center of almost every market development.  In the morning we will examine exports for crude oil and condensate, then the afternoon sessions will address natural gas, LNG and natural gas liquids.

Tuesday and Wednesday, September 29-30, 2015 will cover our ‘classic’ School of Energy curriculum, and is designed around six modules:

Module #1 –Market Overview, Understanding Energy Fundamentals Models

Module #2 – Production: Unconventional and Conventional, The Link to Investment Returns and Price, Well Cost, Production Rates, Decline Curves, Production Economics

Module #3 – Natural Gas Markets: Current Market, Transporting Gas – Natural Gas Pipeline Projects, Natural Gas Hubs and Basis, Natural Gas Transportation, Rates and Regulation, Market Trends: Power, Industrial, Res/Comm, LNG Exports

Module #4 – Crude Oil: Current Market, Transporting Crude Oil – Pipe, Rail, Water, Fundamentals of Refining, Crude Oil Hubs and Basis, Crude Oil Transportation, Rates and Regulation, Netbacks, Quality - Light, Medium & Heavy Demand, Condensate and Crude Exports

Module #5 – Natural Gas Liquids: Current Market, Transporting NGLs, Gas Processing and Fractionation, NGL Hubs and Basis, NGL Transportation, Rates and Regulation, Netbacks, Regional Product Imbalances; Price Impact, NGL Exports

Module #6 – What It All Means: Handicapping Forecasts, The Implications of Exports, A New Energy Future

More About the School

In addition to Dr. Fesharaki, the conference will also include a couple of other special guest speakers.  We will announce those speakers in due course.

There will be networking events at the end of each day, so plan to stay late.

Format is classroom style – see picture below. You will need a laptop computer, wireless internet capable, with Microsoft Office 2007 or higher.    Warning, Apple computers will not be able to access some data resources.

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.

Conference participants can earn up to 12 CPE credits of specialized knowledge and application (Microsoft Excel).

You will have access to both the PowerPoint slides (pdf format) 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 ‘Houston Casual’.  That means jeans are ok, but business casual is just as acceptable.