RBN Energy

On December 1, the government of Alberta will officially end its nearly two-year-old policy of curtailing crude oil production to help shrink the massive price discounts that producers had been enduring. It would hardly be an overstatement to say that North American oil markets have changed dramatically since the production cap was implemented by Canada’s largest oil-producing province in January 2019. A short-but-bruising oil price war and a pandemic that slashed demand for crude resulted in Alberta producers making supply cuts even bigger than their government had mandated. Today, we look back at the provincial government’s policy and what has changed to motivate its suspension.

Condensates are quirky as heck — everyone’s got his or her own definition of what they are, for one thing — and their very quirkiness has sent condensates on a wild ride during the Shale Era. For example, the U.S. government for years categorized “conde” as a very light crude oil, and the long-standing ban on most crude exports meant you couldn’t export the stuff to anywhere but Canada. Unless, that is, you ran conde through a splitter to make NGLs, naphthas, and kerosene — those are petroleum products and they could (and still can) be exported, no questions asked. Then, as condensate production started soaring, especially in the Eagle Ford, the feds said that if you “processed” conde in special equipment to make it less volatile you could export it — no splitting required. That made the folks who invested in splitters shout in unison, “Huh?!” The roller-coaster for conde didn’t end there. The U.S. soon lifted the ban on all crude exports, and suddenly you didn’t need to process condensate at all to export it. More upheaval ensued. Today, we discuss this peculiar grouping of hydrocarbons.

Last week, Hurricane Delta became the latest of a string of hurricanes and tropical storms that have assaulted the Gulf Coast this year and disrupted energy production in the Gulf of Mexico — and energy exports. A number of major storms made direct hits or glancing blows to crude export centers like Corpus Christi, Houston, Beaumont, and Louisiana, forcing marine terminals to either slow down their carrier-loading operations or shut down for a few days at a time. That led to a yo-yoing of weekly export volumes: way down one week, way up the next. Despite the short-term dislocations, however, total export volumes since the hurricane season started on June 1 are actually up slightly from the first five months of 2020, a testament to the resilience not only of the export market but to the marine terminals themselves. Today, we discuss how hurricanes and tropical storms have been affecting export-terminal activity.

Tough times in the crude oil sector generally affect all participants to some degree, but the impacts can vary widely by production basin. We saw that back in 2014-16, when the crash in oil prices battered the Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Niobrara but left the Permian unscathed — production there actually kept rising. Fast-forward to 2020, with its COVID-induced demand destruction, anemic prices, and uncertain-at-best recovery, and again the Bakken really took it on the chin. Production in the basin plummeted by 28% in one month — from April to May — and while Bakken output rebounded this summer, the rig count has been hovering at its lowest level in memory and another, albeit slower production decline may be imminent. Today, we discuss the challenges facing exploration and production companies in western North Dakota.

In a normal year, the autumn months would be filled with the smell of brisket at a tailgate barbecue and the sound of college football fans cheering in their favorite team's stadium. But with the college football stadiums largely empty due to COVID-19, is there something that could fill the void? Well, maybe. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) a couple months back issued a notice proposing Lease Sale 256 for oil and gas exploration of 78.8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). You will probably not be able to find the announcement of the lease sale on ESPN this November, but you will be able to tune into the livestream set in New Orleans. Today, we describe the process for bidding and acquiring lease acreage in the Gulf of Mexico.

The offshore Gulf of Mexico is often viewed as the rock-steady player in U.S. crude oil production. Unlike price-trigger-happy shale producers that quickly ratchet their activity up or down, depending on what WTI is selling for that month or quarter, producers in the Gulf base their big, upfront investments in new platforms or subsea tiebacks on very long-term oil-price expectations. Also, unlike shale wells, whose production peaks early then trails off, wells in the GOM typically maintain high levels of production for years and years. But don’t think for a minute that production in the Gulf can’t spike down, if there’s a good reason. GOM output dropped by 300 Mb/d, or 16%, from March to April as producers shut down wells in response to sharply lower oil prices, and a couple of weeks ago more than 80% of GOM wells were taken offline in anticipation of Hurricane Laura. Today, we look at offshore oil production ups and downs in a wild and woolly year and what’s ahead for the GOM.

Western Canadian producers have been deeply impacted by lower crude oil prices and the demand-destroying effects of COVID-19. This past spring, oil production in the vast region dropped by an estimated 940 Mb/d, or as much as 20% from the record highs earlier this year. Taking that much production offline helped in at least one sense: it eased long-standing constraints on takeaway pipelines like Enbridge’s Canadian Mainline, TC Energy’s Keystone Pipeline, and the government of Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline. Production has been rebounding this summer, however, and there are indications that pipeline constraints may be returning and apportionment of uncommitted space on some pipes may again become a persistent issue. Today, we continue a review of production and takeaway capacity in Alberta and its provincial neighbors with a look at apportionment trends on the biggest pipelines.