RBN Energy
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Friday, 8/29/2025
Thursday, 8/28/2025
U.S. interstates are populated with electronic displays that update drivers in real-time on traffic conditions, road closures, weather alerts and other important events. If there was a sign for executives steering our nation’s oil and gas producers, it would likely read “Poor Visibility, Slow Down Ahead.” After a short-lived price rally in Q1 2025, the industry faced lower commodity realizations and macroeconomic headwinds in Q2 2025, which spooked investors and hardened a cautious investment approach. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the latest results of the 39 major U.S. E&P companies we cover and look at what’s ahead.
Analyst Insights
Analyst Insights are unique perspectives provided by RBN analysts about energy markets developments. The Insights may cover a wide range of information, such as industry trends, fundamentals, competitive landscape, or other market rumblings. These Insights are designed to be bite-size but punchy analysis so that readers can stay abreast of the most important market changes.
By Jeremy Meier - Friday, 8/29/2025 (3:15 pm)
US oil and gas rig count ended the month of August with another week-on-week decline, dropping two rigs for the week ending August 29 and marking the fourth week of declines this month according to Baker Hughes data.
By Martin King - Friday, 8/29/2025 (12:45 pm)
For the week of August 29, Baker Hughes reported that the Western Canadian gas-directed rig count fell one to 55 (blue line and text in left hand chart below), 12 less than one year ago and is the lowest for this time of year since 2020.
Daily Energy Blog
Thursday, 7/04/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The four deepwater crude oil export projects under development along the U.S. Gulf Coast are getting closer to receiving their regulatory go-aheads after years of planning and millions of dollars spent. In fact, Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) received its license in April. These projects have sparked commercial and wider market interest because of the many benefits they may provide — including the ability to fully load 2-MMbbl Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) without any reverse lightering. In today’s RBN blog, we highlight key insights from our new Drill Down Report on the four projects, the potential benefits and the challenges they face.
Tuesday, 7/02/2024
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
Fast-rising NGL supplies during the early years of the Shale Era fueled excitement about the potential for new petrochemical plants in the U.S., especially ethane-only crackers to make ethylene and other byproducts, along with propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plants to make propylene. While 11 new ethane-fed crackers have come online in the U.S. since the mid-2010s and the world’s largest — Chevron Phillips Chemical and QatarEnergy’s 4.8-billion-lb/year facility — is under construction in Texas, only three of the many PDH projects proposed over the same period were actually built. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at why the initial rush of new PDH project announcements resulted in so few new U.S. plants.
Monday, 7/01/2024
Category:
Government & Regulatory
That the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron Deference, a key foundation of modern administrative law for 40 years, in its June 28 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (Loper Bright) was no surprise, although it does not make it any less disruptive. The order follows a steady drumbeat of Supreme Court decisions issued during this term and in recent prior ones curbing the regulatory enforcement capabilities of Executive Branch agencies. But while this is a landmark case and would be expected to lead to a host of new legal challenges, its practical effect might end up being more nuanced. In today’s RBN blog, we revisit the Chevron Deference, why the Court said it had to go, and what it might mean for economic and environmental regulations impacting the energy industry.
Friday, 6/28/2024
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
Mont Belvieu, TX and Conway, KS, are the two most significant U.S. hubs for NGL trading, storage and fractionation, with the much bigger Mont Belvieu hub primarily serving Gulf Coast and export demand, while the smaller Conway hub is focused on Midwest/Great Plains demand, especially for propane. The pricing dynamics between the two hubs are a key indicator of the supply/demand balance between the regions, but they don’t have the same kind of influence over the direction or magnitude of flows as price differential dynamics often do for other energy commodities. In today’s RBN blog, we will examine the gap between the price of the NGL “basket” in Mont Belvieu versus Conway and what that price spread tells us.
Thursday, 6/27/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
The Panama Canal expansion completed in June 2016 was expected to allow much larger LNG tankers to move product from Sabine Pass LNG and other Gulf Coast export terminals through the canal to Asian and Latin American customers. But water levels at Gatun Lake, which provides the fresh water needed to operate the canal’s locks, have been well below normal in recent years, limiting opportunities to use the canal and complicating plans to ramp up LNG flows through it. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the challenges of moving LNG through the Panama Canal, how access to the waterway has been affected by drought and climate conditions over the past decade, and the impact on the LNG market.
Wednesday, 6/26/2024
Category:
Financial
After thoroughly alienating their investor base over more than two decades of boom-and-bust cycles, U.S. E&Ps won investors back in the early 2020s by radically transforming themselves from high-risk to high-yield vehicles. Fueled by surging crude oil and natural gas prices in 2022, producers generated massive free cash flows — and spectacular shareholder returns that topped 10% during the late-2022 peak. Prices and cash flows subsequently retreated, however, and skeptics worried about the sustainability of producers’ high-return strategy. Would debt repayment, dividends and share buybacks sink? In today’s RBN blog, we‘ll review the Q1 2024 cash allocation of the major U.S. E&Ps with a spotlight on current dividend yields.
Tuesday, 6/25/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The Light Louisiana Sweet (LLS) crude market has evolved in recent years, due largely to the reversal of the Capline pipeline as well as limited production growth from the offshore fields that contribute to the LLS market. Yet the LLS premium against other U.S. grades remains strong, a sign that refiners aren’t ready to give up on it just yet, given its attractive yields of high-value transportation fuels like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. In today’s RBN blog, we will revisit LLS and examine its production and demand outlook.
Monday, 6/24/2024
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
Energy Transfer’s plan to buy WTG Midstream, a West Texas-based and private equity-backed natural gas gatherer and processor, just got a bit less expensive — and not quite so comprehensive. Energy Transfer will still acquire WTG’s network of more than 6,000 miles of gas pipelines, eight processing plants and more, but WTG’s 20% stake in the joint-venture (JV) BANGL pipeline system is no longer part of the deal. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll take a look at the detour from the original transaction.
Friday, 6/21/2024
Category:
Financial
No doubt about it, most of the headline-grabbing oil and gas M&A activity lately has involved large, publicly owned producers gobbling up other good-sized E&Ps, lock, stock and barrel. But there are other ways to increase scale and improve operational efficiency, as evidenced by privately held WildFire Energy’s bolt-on acquisition frenzy in the relatively sleepy northeastern Eagle Ford, aka the East Eagle Ford. In less than three years, with one bolt-on acquisition after another, WildFire — named in anticipation of the company’s aggressive expansion strategy — has morphed from a small player in the often-overlooked area into one of the largest producers there, with a laser focus on maximizing returns to its management and private-equity owners. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the E&P and its rapid rise.
Thursday, 6/20/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The Nederland/Beaumont crude oil hub has been somewhat overshadowed recently by other Gulf Coast crude export hubs despite hosting America’s largest refinery, a handful of export terminals and pipeline links to the prolific Permian Basin. But while plans to build one or more deepwater crude export terminals could mean big changes for the Gulf Coast hubs, the Nederland/Beaumont area isn’t standing still. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss what’s ahead for the region and its emergence as a leader in NGL exports.
Tuesday, 6/18/2024
Category:
Renewables
Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022 was intended to unleash a wave of clean-energy initiatives, from hydrogen and renewable fuels to electric vehicles and large-scale carbon-capture projects, all part of the Biden administration’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and move the U.S. closer to a net-zero economy. But while billions in federal financing and tax credits have helped move many projects forward, they can only advance as fast as permitting, regulations and economic reality will allow. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the surge in proposed carbon-capture projects since passage of the IRA, where they are in the review process, and how the pace of permitting at the federal level compares with the states that have primacy over their own sequestration wells.
Wednesday, 6/19/2024
Category:
Energy
There’s never been any reason to question the drivers for energy infrastructure development — until now. Historically, the drivers were almost always “supply-push.” The Shale Revolution brought on increasing production volumes that needed to be moved to market, and midstreamers — backed by producer commitments — responded with the infrastructure to make it happen. But now things seem to be different. U.S. energy infrastructure investment is soaring across crude oil, natural gas and NGL markets and, as in previous buildouts, midstreamers are bringing on new processing plants, pipelines, fractionators, storage facilities, export terminals and everything in between. We count nearly 70 projects in the works. But crude production has been flat as a pancake, natural gas is down, and lately NGLs are up — but as you might expect, only in one basin: the Permian. So what is driving all the infrastructure development this time around? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore why that question will be front-and-center at our upcoming School of Energy: Catch a Wave. Fair warning, this blog includes an unabashed advertorial for our 2024 conference coming up on June 26-27 in Houston.
Monday, 6/17/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The four deepwater crude oil export projects under development along the U.S. Gulf Coast are getting closer to receiving their regulatory go-aheads after years of planning and millions of dollars spent. In fact, Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) received its license in April. These projects have sparked commercial and wider market interest because of the many benefits they may provide — including the ability to fully load 2-MMbbl Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) without any reverse lightering. In today’s RBN blog, we highlight key insights from our new Drill Down Report on the four projects, the potential benefits and the challenges they face.
Friday, 6/14/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
Some of the most prolific, crude-oil-saturated rock in the Permian’s Delaware Basin and Central Platform comes with a nasty complication — namely, associated gas with very high levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2). But rather than walking away from all those potential barrels, one midstream company saw the treatment of high-H2S, high-CO2 gas as a market niche worth pursuing. Backed by commitments from Black Bay Energy Capital and an area E&P, Piñon Midstream has been expanding a system in southeastern New Mexico that not only gathers the super-corrosive gas and removes almost all the H2S and CO2, it also permanently sequesters the stuff deep underground through a pair of 18,000-foot-deep, Class II injection wells. In today’s RBN blog, we will provide an update on Piñon’s Dark Horse Treating Facility and the company’s plan for a further build-out of its sour gas system.
Thursday, 6/13/2024
Category:
Refined Fuels
Refinery distillation units separate crude oil into light, medium and heavy fractions. After that, refiners start performing chemical reactions using catalysts — materials that accelerate chemical reactions — to change the oil’s natural molecules into the forms needed in modern fuels. In recent years, refiners have stepped up their efforts to recycle those catalysts to improve their profitability and environmental performance. In today’s RBN blog, we explain how catalysts, which were formerly disposed of as hazardous waste, are increasingly being recycled and reused in refineries.