RBN Energy
Early Access
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
Wednesday, 4/10/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
In the race to build the next deepwater crude oil export terminal along the U.S. Gulf Coast, there’s a lot of competition but one project now has a clear advantage: Enterprise Product Partners’ planned Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT), which has made the most progress in moving through the regulatory morass and announced that it had received its deepwater port license on April 9. In today’s RBN blog, we provide an update on SPOT’s progress and look at some of its inherent advantages, including a potentially shorter time to market and extensive pipeline connectivity.
Tuesday, 4/09/2024
Category:
Financial
Growth for growth’s sake. In the early years of the Shale Revolution, that’s what it was all about. Backed by billions of dollars in Wall Street borrowings, E&Ps plowed vast piles of cash into increasing production. It was the era of “Drill baby drill!” And we all know what happened next. Rabid production growth contributed to oversupply and crude oil prices crashed. But resilient E&Ps clawed their way back by adopting what we now know as capital discipline, initially in fits and starts. Then, after the COVID price meltdown, they went all-in, elevating free cash flow generation to Job #1 and returning a significant portion of cash flow to shareholders. It worked! Financial markets started to think of E&Ps more as yield vehicles than growth plays. But it is in the DNA of oil and gas producers to grow. And now that U.S. crude prices are above $85/bbl, could we see a backslide toward organic growth — a 2024 rendition of “Drill baby drill”? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore the historical context of E&Ps’ transition to capital discipline and what it tells us about what’s coming next.
Monday, 4/08/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The deepwater crude oil export projects under development along the U.S. Gulf Coast offer a number of potential benefits to shippers and customers alike. These include the ability to fully load a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) and the economies of scale that come with that, the elimination of reverse lightering and the corresponding decrease in emissions, and freed-up access on congested ship channels for other exports such as NGLs, refined products and clean ammonia. So, given all the potential upside, why hasn’t anyone fully committed to building one? In today’s RBN blog, we focus on the obstacles faced by deepwater export facilities and where each of the projects under development is in the permitting process.
Friday, 4/05/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
LNG commerce is composed of two primary models. One is the traditional point-to-point model, on which the industry was founded and still accounts for more than 60% of LNG trade. More recently, the portfolio model has emerged, pursued by upstream oil and gas majors, that would allow them to monetize their gas reserves by converting them to LNG and shipping the product worldwide in vessels under their control — an attractive strategy that also would allow them to increase their exposure in the LNG market to take advantage of international arbitrage opportunities. As such, they are always long in LNG and in the ships required to move it. However, the portfolio model is being infiltrated by a buyer community looking to become short-side portfolio players and increasingly committing to long-term offtake agreements or FOB sales, then shipping LNG not only to meet their domestic market needs but to take advantage of regional pricing differentials. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the rise of the short-side portfolio player model and ask who might prevail in a potential clash of titans over market share and dominance.
Good Enough - Most E&P 2023 Profits Dip To Solid Levels After Record 2022 But Gas Producers Struggle
Thursday, 4/04/2024
Category:
Financial
U.S. E&Ps have just concluded discussions of their Q4 and full-year 2023 results and, as usual, the view of analysts and investors can be summed up by one question: What have you done for me lately? But while the collective results of the 44 producers we track were off from the previous quarter and a record 2022, there’s a lot to be said for how well they held up through a period of unusually low natural gas prices. In fact, if you take a step or two back for a longer-term perspective you’d see a strong historical performance that suggests E&Ps really have learned how to do well through commodity price ups and downs. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the 2023 results of a representative group of major U.S. producers and look ahead to how 2024 may shake out.
Wednesday, 4/03/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah, which may be the quirkiest production area in the Lower 48, is firing on all cylinders. Production of the basin’s unique waxy crude is at an all-time high, the natural gas takeaway constraints that had threatened to limit growth are being resolved, and demand for waxy crude is on the rise. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll provide an update on the Uinta, where the crude looks and feels like shoe polish and is trucked and railed — not piped — to market.
Tuesday, 4/02/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently raised a few eyebrows across the energy industry with a report that producers in three key shale states — including Texas, the nation’s #1 oil producer — seem to be extracting larger amounts of “heavier” crude oil. Of course, the oil is only heavier relative to the light and superlight grades that have been produced in copious amounts since the dawn of the Shale Revolution. But these denser, lower-API volumes have recently helped drive growth in total crude output. In today’s RBN blog, we unpack what the EIA discussed in its writeup, explore some of the possible drivers behind the apparently heavier oil production, and discuss what it might mean for the domestic market.
Monday, 4/01/2024
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
Normal butane is an important gasoline blendstock, with a great combination of high octane and relatively low cost. It also has a high Reid vapor pressure, or RVP, which is a good news/bad news kind of thing because while regulators allow higher-RVP gasoline — that is, gasoline with higher levels of butane — to be sold during the colder months of the year, they forbid its sale during the warmer months, thereby forcing butane levels in gasoline to be kept to a minimum. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, air-quality regulations and seasonal shifts in butane blending may add complexity to gasoline production and marketing, but they also create opportunities to increase gasoline supply and earn substantially larger profits through much of the year.
Thursday, 3/28/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
Natural gas prices at the Waha Hub in West Texas have been below zero for going on two weeks — that’s outright negative cash prices, not basis, which means Permian producers are literally paying to have their gas taken away. Ample supply along with weak demand have prompted an early start to the injection season this year and are putting downward pressure on U.S. gas prices more broadly. But why all the craziness now? One of the best ways to get a handle on the Permian gas-market meshugah is to examine gas pipeline flows within the basin and without, which, as it turns out, is the focus of our upcoming School of Energy Master Class. Today's RBN blog is a blatant advertorial for that event where we’ll be discussing gas-flow analysis, pipeline modeling and how they help explain why Waha gas prices have gone sub-zero.
Friday, 3/29/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
It’s been a devastating few weeks for the natural gas market. Sure, Shale Era abundance was supposed to keep gas prices from skyrocketing — and it generally has. But seriously? Henry Hub gas sinking below $2/MMBtu — and staying there, in the depths of the winter heating season? Prices have stabilized a little as a few E&Ps announced cutbacks in capex and gas-focused drilling, but gas-storage levels are abnormally high, coal-plant retirements have trimmed opportunities for coal-to-gas switching, and any significant gains in LNG exports aren’t going to happen until this time next year. With all that, you’ve gotta ask — as we do in today’s RBN blog — how low could natural gas prices go?
Wednesday, 3/27/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
The uncertainties around solar power are well understood — when the sun doesn’t shine as much as expected, power grids that rely heavily on that generation must turn elsewhere to meet consumer demand. And while a shortfall in solar generation can be challenging to navigate, the difference between actual and forecast levels is typically only a few percentage points and power grids are usually ready and able to make up any difference. But what happens when the sun is largely obscured by the moon for several hours across a wide swath of the country? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the impact of the October 14 partial eclipse, preview the path of the April 8 total eclipse, and outline the steps being taken to ensure that power grids are ready for it.
Tuesday, 3/26/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
Many have argued that U.S.-sourced LNG can be instrumental in combating climate change by helping countries around the world replace coal-fired generation with natural gas-fired power. While this argument carries a lot of force in the eyes of many politicians and LNG marketers, the questions of exactly how — and to what extent — LNG can replace coal need to be asked. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the challenges that the expanded use of LNG faces in countries with high coal utilization and the possible means of overcoming them.
Monday, 3/25/2024
Category:
Renewables
The Biden administration has placed some big bets on clean hydrogen, seeing it as a replacement fuel for some hard-to-abate industries and putting it at the heart of its long-term decarbonization efforts. But while clean hydrogen has significant long-term potential — backed by major subsidies, including the 45V production tax credit (PTC) — figuring out a path to a greater role in the U.S. energy mix is more complicated than it might seem. The proposed rules around the tax credit have stirred up a hornet’s nest worth of criticism from those who think the guidance might ultimately do more harm than good. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll preview our latest Drill Down Report on the incentives — primarily the 45V tax credit — intended to expand the clean hydrogen industry and examine some of the barriers to significant growth.
Friday, 3/22/2024
Category:
Crude Oil
The Enbridge Mainline, by far the largest transportation network for growing Western Canadian crude oil supplies to the U.S. Midwest, Gulf Coast and Eastern Canada, recently received regulatory approval for the tolls that it charges shippers for using the massive pipeline system. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the Canada Energy Regulator’s (CER) thumbs-up ensures another five years of shipping cost predictability and comes as the Canadian oil pipeline landscape is about to permanently change with the pending startup of the 590-Mb/d Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX).
Thursday, 3/21/2024
Category:
Natural Gas
Listen to Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence” and you hear the words of a teenager coming to terms with the disconnect between the world his parents promised and the real world yet to come. In the LNG market, there’s a similar generational divide. A business built on long-term contracts, rigid trade patterns, and the promise of substantial growth potential is being met with a more skeptical outlook, one in which a large amount of incremental LNG supply has been locked up but serious questions remain about LNG demand. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, an entire generation of LNG supply is being built on the presumption of selling it for $10/MMBtu or more, but a shortfall in demand growth could leave it selling for considerably less. And if that happens … sunk-cost economics, here we come.