Daily Energy Posts

RBN expects total Canadian crude production to grow to more than 5 MMb/d by the end of 2019 – an increase of 1.4 MMb/d over 2013.

US tight oil production from shale has surged over the past three years pushing overall domestic output up by more than 60 percent since 2011. Over that same period the quality of US crude production has gotten considerably lighter.

With natural gas production in Marcellus/Utica on a steep upward curve, midstream companies are developing plans to rework their existing pipelines or build new ones to help move the region’s gas to market. No stone is being left unturned.

After tracking within $1/Bbl or so of each other for years, international benchmark Brent crude suddenly began to trade at a higher premium to US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) in 2010. The Brent premium widened out as far as $28/Bbl in November 2011 and averaged $18/Bbl in 2012.

The current forward curve (June 9,2014) for CME NYMEX Henry Hub gas futures shows prices at $4.645/MMBtu for July 2014 then increasing through January 2015 to $4.776/MMBtu before falling back to $4.636/MMBtu at the end of next winter in March 2015.

Permian crude production is headed to 1.7 MMb/d by the end of 2014. Current hot spots include the Delaware Basin in Northwest Texas and Southeast New Mexico. Two refiners with plants in West Texas and New Mexico are expanding their crude gathering systems to increase local crude processing.

Sitting within or near the Marcellus/Utica shale gas play and facing tightening environmental rules that start kicking in next April, power generators in the PJM (a large region that includes the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Ohio as well as parts of Vi

With so much positive news out there about ever-rising production from unconventional oil and natural gas plays, word that the Energy Information Administration has reduced its estimate of recoverable oil from California’s Monterey Shale region by 95% is sobering, to say the least.

Net exports of refined products from the US Gulf are booming. Diesel exports are up over 300 percent since 2009 and gasoline is up five fold over the same period. The growth is driven by strong diesel margins and US refinery feedstock and fuel cost advantages.

With the Northeast natural gas market now dominated by physical flows from the Marcellus/Utica, Appalachia producers are targeting the Midwest, the Southeast and—the biggest prize of all—the LNG export projects under development along the Gulf Coast.