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Friday, 10/03/2025
Thursday, 10/02/2025
In the early 2000s, prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) were becoming increasingly disconnected from global fundamentals. WTI reflected conditions in the Midcontinent at the Cushing, OK, crude oil storage hub, where bottlenecks repeatedly distorted its value. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how the problem contributed to the creation of the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI) 16 years ago, how the index has evolved and whether it remains relevant today.
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 John Abeln - Thursday, 10/02/2025 (3:30 pm)
Report Highlight: NATGAS Appalachia
Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line was granted a crucial authorization last week, bringing the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) one step closer to fruition. This project will allow the Williams Company pipeline to flow an incremental 400 MMcf/d to New York City and Long Island.
By Martin King - Thursday, 10/02/2025 (2:30 pm)
Waterborne crude oil exports from the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMX) averaged 453 Mb/d in September 2025 (rightmost stacked columns in chart below), a gain of 24 Mb/d versus August and an increase of 143 Mb/d from a year ago based on tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Daily Energy Blog
Thursday, 3/08/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
On Tuesday, NYMEX April natural gas fell 5.2% to $2.355/MMbtu, which was 3.3 cnts above another 10 year low “target”. Prices have been hitting decade lows on the way down. So the new low was bait for the bears if you ever saw it. Yesterday the market opened at $2.34 and in 72 minutes fell to $2.28, or 6 cnts/MMbtu. I was in NYC speaking at the Morgan Stanley MLP conference and could hear screams from the street – “It’s the end of the world as we know it!” The market seemed to be gunning for $2.20 which would have blown through all sorts of technical supports and targets. Of course, it would also be consistent with the huge overhang in storage inventories that has been a frequent topic in RBN postings over the past few weeks.
Wednesday, 3/07/2012
Category:
Crude Oil
U.S. onshore crude oil production forecasts have skyrocketed in recent months, along with rig counts, current production and any other measure of activity you can think of. The big dogs are Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian – all of which yield light-sweet crude or even lighter condensates. As outlined here last week in ‘You're doin' fine, Oklahoma’, forecasts for U.S. crude oil production can be classified as high, very high and extremely high. BENTEK is in the very high camp, expecting an increase of 2.2 Bcf/d between 2011 and 2016. Raymond James is poster child for the extremely high crowd, coming in at an incremental 3.5 Bcf/d by 2015. (RJ rounds up to 4.0 Bcf/d in some of their materials.). All of the forecasts have one thing in common. It is all light sweet crude oil. Not that gunky Canadian stuff that has so many protesters in a tizzy. …But clean, sweet smelling U.S. natural crude oil, made from the bodies of dead dinosaurs billions of years ago. (the one on the right)
Tuesday, 3/06/2012
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
To everything there is a season. And this spring is the season for plant turnarounds in the NGL industry. Fractionators will be offline. Petrochemical plants will be down. And NGL market prices, already buffeted by huge production increases from the shale phenomenon will feel the brunt of the outages.
Friday, 3/02/2012
Category:
Crude Oil
You may have heard that Cushing, Oklahoma is no longer the center of the crude oil universe. The logic goes that WTI is no longer representative of the world crude oil price. …The WTI-Brent arbitrage is broken. …NYMEX and ICE are looking for trading hubs to replace Cushing. ….The days of WTI as a hedging vehicle for everything between jet fuel in Wisconsin to crude oil production in Latin America are ancient history. ….Rail cars from the Bakken are moving to St. James, LA or Albany, NY. …Certainly not Cushing, OK. ….All the shale oil barrels want to get to the huge Gulf Coast refinery complex, bypassing Cushing. ….It is only a matter of time before Cushing devolves into a dusty Oklahoma town with a lot of rusting tanks. …And all crude oil will trade against St. James, or Brent, or some new Gulf Coast index.
Thursday, 3/01/2012
Category:
Crude Oil
Shale oil has created a problem for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). And that in turn has created a problem for U.S.-flag vessel operators. Those operators are trying to create problems for Gulf Coast refiners. And this whole situation could create a problem for the crude oil market if new hostilities come to the Middle East…a problem with significant consequences for crude prices.
Wednesday, 2/29/2012
Category:
Crude Oil
One of the most prolific “new” crude oil plays is the Permian Basin. Funny how things work out. After the oil price bust of the mid-1980s there was a bumper sticker on every Midland-Odessa pickup: The oilman’s prayer “Please lord, Just Give Me One More Oil Boom. I Promise Not to Blow It Next Time.” Twenty-five years later those prayers have been answered. Permian production broke above 1 MMb/d in March. It’s the biggest shale oil, a.k.a., tight oil play out there. The region is expected to grow by at least another 50% over the next 3-5 years.
Tuesday, 2/28/2012
Category:
Hydrocarbons
Crude oil production in the Eagle Ford has ramped up from less than 50 Mb/d two years ago to almost 400 Mb/d today, and the growth shows no sign of slowing down. In most reports and statistics, all of this volume shows up as crude oil. But it’s not. Between 60%-70% of this production is condensate – a hydrocarbon classification that is somewhere between crude oil and natural gas liquids. It is valued differently from crude, can require handling different from crude, and can go into markets different from crude. But neither is it a natural gas liquid. Condensates are produced in the field, not extracted from a wet gas stream by a cryogenic processing unit. Condensates are neither fish nor fowl.
Monday, 2/27/2012
Category:
Crude Oil
In the first week of this month, crude oil prices in the Bakken crashed. We talked about the development here in Back to the Future – What happened to Bakken and Canadian Crude Prices? At one point, the Bakken was trading $45/bbl under Brent. It is not over yet. Prices at Clearbrook, MN are still $26/Bbl under Brent. Was it just a rogue wave? What can we learn from this market event? And how can we recognize the onset of similar disruptions in the future?
Friday, 2/24/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
Ok, crude prices were up again yesterday. This is starting to get ridiculous. There’s no hot war (yet), but crude oil prices are up nearly $33.00/bbl over the past five months, $12/bbl in the last two weeks. NYMEX April crude closed at $107.84/Bbl, up $1.55. It popped over $108 for a while, a level last reached in May of last year. Technical analysts are going crazy with this signal confirming all sorts of breakouts and new trend lines. Could WTI get back to $145.29/bbl hit on July 3, 2008? That’s not even a stretch. Yesterday Brent almost hit $125/bbl. So crude traded on the international market is only twenty bucks away from the record high number. Just 15% more to go.
Tuesday, 2/21/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
Prices may be up a bit, and producers are curtailing some production, but it’s a long way between now and the end of the injection season. So there is still the distinct possibility that natural gas storage capacity will hit the wall this year, perhaps sometime late summer. Of course, there are many market factors that may prevent this outcome, including more producer cutbacks, a very hot summer, offshore hurricane damage, etc. But it could happen. And that means that we need think about how such a scenario might play out.
Monday, 2/20/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
On this President’s Day holiday I have included links to five articles from the last 72 hours, all of which are timely and relevant to today’s energy markets. They range from a sobering assessment of coal oversupply by Bloomberg, a recap of Mitsubishi’s acquisition of Encana’s shale assets, the impact of the drilling slowdown in Luzerne County, PA (in the dry gas region of Pennsylvania), and just for fun, a recap of Range Resources latest victory in its suit-counter-suit over the burning wat
Friday, 2/17/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
If there is no storage capacity available, and demand is maxed out, then production must be curtailed. At today’s rate of production and normalized demand, there will be no more storage capacity available at some point during the summer of 2012. Will this result in a price crash of biblical proportions? Or are we already starting to see producers cutting back, and coming to their collective senses? Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Thursday, 2/16/2012
Category:
Natural Gas
If you don’t look at natural gas basis every day, you might not have noticed that the difference between the highest and the lowest natural gas cash prices in the U.S. fell below $1.00 on Tuesday. Based on ICE prices, the maximum price spread was $0.82/MMbtu on 2/15/12 and $0.83 yesterday. If you like trading basis[1], there is not much good to say about these numbers.
Wednesday, 2/15/2012
Category:
Industry
Just after 2pm eastern time on Monday, the CME/NYMEX (GLOBEX) markets for U.S. crude, gasoline and heating oil futures shut down. Data feeds to trading terminals ceased. The timing was bad. It was a half-hour before the close. Brokers that have been jacked into their terminals for six years (since the launch of “parallel electronic trading”) rushed to the usually comatose oil-futures pit to execute orders that couldn't be completed electronically. Humans traded with humans. (“It’s Alive!”) Thinking about how this must have played out, I just can’t get the final scene of Surrogates, the 2009 Bruce Willis movie out of my head. All those traders in their pajamas walking dazed into the pit.
Tuesday, 2/14/2012
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
This post continues yesterday’s review of the Conway ethane market. If you did not see that one, please go to The Decline and Fall of Conway Ethane – Implications of a 75% collapse in price. Otherwise the paragraphs below won’t make much sense.