RBN Energy
Early Access
Friday, 9/26/2025
Thursday, 9/25/2025
The popularity of weather derivatives has ebbed and flowed since their introduction in the late 1990s but trading activity has rebounded in recent years as the trading community has increasingly begun to reassess the need to hedge weather-related risks — everything from high temperatures and rainfall levels to power prices and cooling demand. In today’s RBN blog, we examine the role of weather derivatives, how they are used to hedge risk, and why they may be becoming increasingly important to the energy industry.
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, 9/26/2025 (3:00 pm)
US oil and gas rig count climbed to 549 rigs for the week ending September 26, an increase of seven rigs vs. a week ago and the largest gain since July according to Baker Hughes data.
By Jason Lindquist - Friday, 9/26/2025 (10:00 am)
Report Highlight: Hydrogen Billboard
Low-carbon steel that utilizes green hydrogen in the production process will be used in Microsoft data centers under an agreement announced this week with Swedish steelmaker Stegra.
Daily Energy Blog
Sunday, 3/27/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
There’s a lot of confusion out there — both in the media and the general public — about how producers in the U.S. oil and gas industry plan their operations for the months ahead and the degree to which they could ratchet up their production to help alleviate the current global supply shortfall and help bring down high prices. It’s not as simple or immediate as some might imagine. There are many reasons why E&Ps are either reluctant or unable to quickly increase their crude oil and natural gas production. Capital budgets are up in 2022 by an average of 23% over 2021. That increase seems substantial, but about two-thirds (15%) results from oilfield service inflation. And there are other headwinds as well. In today’s RBN blog, we drill down into the numbers with a look at producers’ capex and production guidance for 2022, the sharp decline in drilled-but-uncompleted wells, the impact of inflation and other factors that weigh on E&Ps today.
Thursday, 3/24/2022
Category:
Renewables
Predictions about what the energy market and the global economy might look like in the future can feel a bit like stargazing — the closer something is, the clearer it appears. But if something is really far away, even the Hubble Space Telescope won’t bring it precisely into view, especially if it’s a still-developing solar system or a distant planet. That’s pretty much where things stand with bioethylene, which could become a shooting star but might also end up as a big cloud of dust. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the developing market for bioethylene: where it’s being made, what changes might make it more economical to produce in the U.S., and its target markets.
Wednesday, 3/23/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
Getting by without a few million barrels a day of Russian crude oil won't be easy for the global market, but it's gotta be done. One way to help ease the supply shortfall would be for U.S. E&Ps to ramp up their crude oil production, but the oil patch's output has remained close to flat — so far at least. Why aren't producers jumping in? Are the Biden administration’s policies and mixed messages on hydrocarbons putting the kibosh on production growth? Is it a scarcity of completion crews, or pipes or frac sand? Perhaps it’s worries that increasing production would send oil prices sliding and hurt producers’ bottom lines? Or is it all about ESG and the shift by many large investment funds and banks away from anything related to fossil fuels? Possibly all of the above? In today’s RBN blog, we look at what’s really behind the snail’s pace of U.S. crude oil production growth.
Tuesday, 3/22/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
The European natural gas market has been in crisis this winter, with prices skyrocketing north of $100/MMBtu recently. Tight supplies, low storage levels, and a new gas-supply-security issue sparked by the war in Ukraine has many European nations, especially Germany, embarking on a crash course to increase supplies and diversify away from Russian gas imports. In this quest, increasing gas supplies in both the short- and long-term is a top priority and will require substantially more LNG capacity to replace — and eliminate the need for — Russian gas. With Europe’s gas-supply urgency on the rise, long-dormant prospects for exporting LNG from Canada’s East Coast are being re-examined. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the potential for repurposing the region’s only LNG import terminal into one that is geared toward exports.
Monday, 3/21/2022
Category:
Financial
So far, most of the merger-and-acquisition activity among crude-oil-focused producers in the COVID era has occurred where you would expect it: the Permian, which seems to dominate almost every discussion about the U.S. energy industry. More recently, though, there has been an uptick in E&P consolidation in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in the Rockies and, earlier this month, in the Bakken. There, Whiting Petroleum and Oasis Petroleum — two once-struggling producers — have agreed to a merger of equals that will create the Bakken’s second-largest producer and the largest pure-play E&P. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the companies’ stock-and-cash deal, which will result in a yet-to-be-renamed entity with an enterprise value of about $6 billion.
Sunday, 3/20/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
U.S. LNG exports are at an all-time high, driven primarily by new capacity online or commissioning, but the existing terminal fleet has also been pushing production to the max as offtakers, particularly in Europe, hunt for every spare molecule they can find. Every single terminal in the U.S. set a new monthly export record in either December or January. But is it enough? With the ongoing and tragic war in Ukraine threatening energy security and reliability in Europe, where gas storage inventories are already running low, the focus increasingly turns to LNG to replace at least some of the gas it typically imports from Russia. It sounds great in theory, and in the long term more LNG capacity will be added, but for now, we’re stuck with the infrastructure we’ve got, putting a ceiling on both how much Europe can take and how much exporters, including the U.S., can send. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the potential for incremental LNG exports from the U.S. to Europe to help offset Russian gas.
Thursday, 3/17/2022
Category:
Renewables
When U.S. lawmakers introduced the 45Q tax credit in 2008, they were planting a seed they hoped would one day sprout into a flourishing carbon-capture industry. As the years wore on and the number of successful projects remained small, they added a little fertilizer in 2018, not only enhancing the value of the credits but easing some of the limitations in the earlier legislation. It’s now 2022 and, with climate concerns and the energy transition at top of mind, Washington is again looking at ways to make the tax credit more effective and spur new growth in carbon-capture projects. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how economic and technological challenges have so far limited the success of carbon-capture initiatives.
Wednesday, 3/16/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
The U.S. natural gas market is one of the most transparent, liquid and efficient commodity markets in the world. Physical trading is anchored by hundreds of thousands of miles of gathering, transmission and distribution pipelines, and well over 100 distinct trading locations across North America. The dynamic physical market is matched by the equally vigorous CME/NYMEX Henry Hub natural gas futures market. Then, there are the forward basis markets — futures contracts for regional physical gas hubs. These primary pricing mechanisms play related but distinct roles in the U.S. gas market, based on when and how they are traded, their respective settlement or delivery periods, and how they are used by market participants. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the primary pricing mechanisms driving the U.S. gas market.
Tuesday, 3/15/2022
Category:
Renewables
For many, coal has become a hydrocarbon non grata in recent years, mostly due to the considerable amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated when it is burned to produce electric power or heat. But what if, instead of combusting coal on its own, coal plants were co-fired by a combination of environmentally friendly versions of ammonia and the volumes of CO2 generated were way less? And what if, through the 2030s and ’40s, the ratio of fuels used in these coal-and-ammonia-fired power plants shifted away from coal and toward ammonia, and by mid-century the plants were fueled only by “green” or “blue” ammonia, which generates little or no CO2? It may sound too good to be true — heck, it may well turn out to be! But there is a lot of interest in the idea, especially in Japan, where coal still retains a big share of the power generation mix. In today’s RBN blog, we continue to look at the prospects for environmentally friendly hydrogen (H2) — and ammonia, an H2 carrier — in the power generation sector.
Monday, 3/14/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued two new statements of policy February 17 regarding the certification of new pipelines and the assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts. Together, the two updates reflect a more meticulous regulatory environment and a stricter adherence to policies that midstreamers must comply with in an effort to avoid lengthy and expensive court challenges that have become more commonplace recently. The guidelines will affect most new projects within FERC jurisdiction and, among those, some of the biggest impacts will be felt in the U.S.’s rapidly expanding LNG sector — the terminals themselves and the pipelines that deliver feedgas to them. That could be cause for concern as Russia’s war on Ukraine has exacerbated an already precarious gas situation in Europe and a global LNG supply crunch. In today’s RBN blog, we explain the impact of FERC’s latest guidance on pipeline certification and GHG policy with regard to the LNG sector.
Sunday, 3/13/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
The world is in desperate need of more crude oil right now and anybody with barrels is scouring every nook and cranny for any additional volume that can be brought to market. Some of that may come from increased production, but the oil patch is a long-cycle industry, just coming off one of the most severe bust periods ever, and it will take time to get all the various national oil companies, majors, and independents rowing in the same direction again. For now, part of the answer will be to drain what we can from storage — after all, a major purpose of storing crude inventories is to serve as a shock absorber for short-term market disruptions. To that end, the U.S. is coordinating with other nations to release strategic reserve volumes to help stymie the global impact of avoiding Russian commodities. Outside of reserves held for strategic purposes though, commercial inventories have already been dwindling as escalating global crude prices have been signaling the market to sell as much as possible. Stored volumes at Cushing — the U.S.’s largest commercial tank farm and home to the pricing benchmark WTI — have been freefalling for months, which raises the question, how much more (if any) can come out of Cushing? In today’s RBN blog, we update one of our Greatest Hits blogs to calculate how much crude oil is actually available at Cushing.
Thursday, 3/10/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
Russia’s war on Ukraine turbocharged global crude oil prices and spurred price volatility the likes of which we haven’t seen since COVID hit two years ago. The price of WTI at the Cushing hub in Oklahoma — the delivery point for CME/NYMEX futures contracts — has gone nuts, and the forward curve is indicating the steepest backwardation ever. In other words, the market is telling traders in all-caps, “SELL, SELL, SELL! Sell any crude you can get your hands on. It’s going to be worth far less in the future.” So anyone with barrels in storage there for non-operational reasons is pulling them out, and fast! In today’s RBN blog, we look at the recent spike in global crude oil prices and what it means for inventories at the U.S.’s most liquid oil hub.
Wednesday, 3/09/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
The fallout from Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been multifold, with the human tragedy front and center. But it’s also reverberated across world economies as governments move to sanction Russia and corporations cut their ties with it. In a bid to minimize the impact on energy supplies and prices, the U.S. and its European allies have been grappling with how best to wean themselves from Russian crude oil and natural gas. That was relatively easy for the U.S. — the Russian import ban announced earlier this week by President Biden is likely to have only minor side effects. But the challenges for Europe are far greater due to its significant dependence on Russian supplies. If you’re stateside and trying to make sense of the market implications of all that — and trying to wrap your head around Europe’s energy infrastructure (and its approach to discussing energy volumes) — you’re not alone. In today’s RBN blog, we begin a look at what the European response could mean for the global LNG market.
Tuesday, 3/08/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
WTI is selling for north of $120 a barrel, gasoline and diesel are retailing for more than $4.10 and $4.80 a gallon, respectively, and, with Russia continuing its unprovoked war against Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine prices for hydrocarbons easing by much anytime soon. As startling as the recent spikes in crude oil and refined products prices may be, however, it’s worth keeping in mind that, in real-dollar terms, prices for these commodities have been considerably higher in the past, including through much of the 2006-14 period and back in 1979-81. And don’t forget, the car, SUV, or pickup you’re driving today consumes about two-thirds as much fuel per mile, on average, as the vehicle you (or your parents) drove back when Ronald Reagan was running for president and Pink Floyd’s The Wall was the best-selling album. In today’s RBN blog, we put today’s “record-breaking” prices for crude oil and motor fuels in perspective.
Monday, 3/07/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
Cheniere Energy is by far the largest owner and operator of U.S. LNG capacity, with 45 MMtpa across nine liquefaction trains at two terminals: the six-train Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana and the three-train Corpus Christi terminal in South Texas. But when Sabine Pass Train 6 was placed into service earlier this year, it marked the first time since 2012 that Cheniere had no capacity under construction. The pause may not last long. With global demand for LNG super-strong and prices even stronger — the April Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) contract hit a record $72.53/MMBtu on March 7 — and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatening future supplies of Russian gas into Europe, Cheniere may be poised to make a final investment decision (FID) on the next stage of its Corpus Christi LNG. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our series on the next wave of U.S. LNG projects with a closer look at Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage III.