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, 3/06/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine has posed a dilemma regarding Russian crude oil. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, sending out an average of more than 7 MMb/d last year, or about 7% of global demand. And the world needs more oil — demand for crude has rebounded from its COVID lows, and OPEC+ (of which Russia is part) and U.S. producers alike have been ramping up production only gradually. So the dilemma is, does the U.S. continue importing Russian crude oil to help hold down gasoline, diesel, and heating oil prices, or does the U.S. ban such imports as an additional rebuke to Russia’s actions in Ukraine? In today’s RBN blog, we look at which refiners and refineries have been importing Russian crude oil, heavy gasoil, and resid and what would happen if the U.S. said “Nyet” to Russian imports.
Thursday, 3/03/2022
Category:
Financial
Amid all the energy-market excitement of the past few months — the soaring demand for LNG, the march to $100/bbl crude oil, sky-high propane prices, and the like — there also has been a continuing consolidation and repositioning in the U.S. midstream sector. While midstream M&A activity has been all over the map, literally and figuratively, it also has revealed discernible themes, chief among them a push to increase the scale and efficiency of gathering systems. Also evident is the desire to expand into growing production areas and, for some energy giants, to either buy out stakes held by joint venture partners or absorb midstream master limited partnerships they had spun off a few years ago. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss a variety of recent midstream deals and what they tell us about 2022’s energy market.
Wednesday, 3/02/2022
Category:
Renewables
It’s true. A lot of folks harbor serious doubts about whether “green,” “blue,” or “pink” hydrogen (H2) can ever be produced efficiently and cheaply enough — and in sufficient volumes — to justify blending hydrogen with natural gas, let alone using H2 as an outright replacement for gas. At the same time, though, a growing number of electric utilities and independent power producers — generally cautious groups — are planning new, large-scale power plants that will be capable of hydrogen/natgas co-firing from the get-go, and can be converted with relative ease to 100% H2 later on. Can hydrogen really make sense as a generation fuel? In today’s RBN blog, we begin a series on the prospects for environmentally friendly hydrogen — and ammonia, an H2 carrier — in the power generation sector.
Wednesday, 3/02/2022
Category:
Sponsored
Concerns about climate change have taken center stage in recent years, with the global economy under mounting pressure from governments, investors, and the wider public to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and transition to cleaner energy sources. With the understanding that a transition will take a long time and that the world will still need oil and gas in the interim, traditional energy companies are increasingly seeking ways to clean up their current operations as much as possible. That’s where responsibly sourced gas (RSG) comes into play — natural gas that is produced, gathered, processed, transported, and distributed in a way that meets the highest environmental standards and practices, resulting in reduced GHG emissions. In today’s RBN blog we’ll look at the emergence of RSG as an important opportunity for oil and gas companies looking to be responsible environmental stewards and how Project Canary’s certification standards measure their progress in achieving those goals.
Tuesday, 3/01/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
It ain’t easy being a midstreamer lately. Well, it’s probably never been easy, but these days trying to get a pipeline project to the finish line might feel a bit like Sisyphus from Greek mythology, forever pushing a boulder up a hill, filled with obstacles and setbacks. That hill has leaned ever-steeper in the past several years as turnover among FERC’s commissioners delayed project reviews, courts reversed a number of FERC approvals, and public opposition to pipeline projects increasingly delayed progress, even resulting in cancelations. And two weeks ago, the approval process was made tougher still when FERC announced new statements of policy regarding project certifications and greenhouse gas impact assessments. The proposed changes have caused a lot of anxiety among midstream companies, although in many ways FERC just declared as policy what was already happening on a case-by-case basis. But midstreamers shouldn’t panic. In today’s RBN blog, we explain the commission’s new guidance and how much impact it will really have.
Monday, 2/28/2022
Category:
Renewables
Among the many challenges facing the energy transition, one is particularly ominous: a lot of stuff will need to be produced, fabricated, and constructed to replace the hydrocarbon-based energy network that runs the world today. We’re talking wind turbines, solar arrays, energy storage batteries, electric vehicles, and all of the other infrastructure and components that will be needed to make the energy transition happen. Not only will all this stuff require a lot of concrete and steel, it also will demand huge quantities of specialty metals and minerals such as lithium, copper, chromium, neodymium, etc. It’s a fact that a decarbonized energy network is much more material intensive — that is, it takes a lot more total investment in minerals, metals, and construction materials to produce the same energy as comes from hydrocarbons. Further complicating things, the increased material needs will be front-end loaded. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the materials-related challenges facing the energy transition.
Sunday, 2/27/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
Global LNG markets have been in overdrive this winter — it seems the world just can’t get enough of the super-cooled natural gas. Moreover, with long-term LNG demand growth in Asia appearing robust well into the next decade, the time would seem ripe to reconsider expanded export opportunities from Canada’s West Coast, one of the closest and potentially largest sources of LNG for Asian buyers. With one major LNG export project already under construction, at least one more awaiting the final go-ahead, and two more serious proposals having emerged last year, Canada’s outlook for additional LNG sales to Asia is clearly bright. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss recent developments regarding Canadian LNG projects.
Thursday, 2/24/2022
Category:
Crude Oil
Well, it took a hot war in Europe, constrained capital spending by U.S. producers, continued restrictions in OPEC+ production, and ongoing economic recovery from a global pandemic, but it’s finally happened: Brent shot past $100 and even $105/bbl Thursday before dropping in the last hour of trading to settle a hair above $99. Even WTI touched $100/bbl briefly. The market has been buzzing about the prospects for the breach of this threshold since October, coming along with waves of speculative trades, a dozen false starts, and countless pundit predictions. Now that it has happened, what does it mean — other than higher gasoline prices, of course? In the good ole days, high prices would spur production growth that would help bring prices back down — eventually. But this time, things are different. Which begs the #1 question: Will triple-digit oil prices last? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll consider these issues in the context of historical price behavior and what we might expect this time around.
Wednesday, 2/23/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
It seems that, once again, Canada is struggling to build crude oil pipeline export capacity fast enough to keep pace with production growth. The latest setback came with the announcement that completion of the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) will be delayed until the third quarter of 2023 and that the 590-Mb/d project will cost almost twice as much as previously estimated. The latest six-to-nine-month delay appears to set the Canadian oil industry on a path to exhausting its spare export capacity by later this year. And that’s not good news for producers. In today’s RBN blog, we consider this latest TMX announcement and what it might mean for pipeline constraints and heavy oil price differentials.
Tuesday, 2/22/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
If you’re going to be involved in any aspect of U.S. natural gas, it’s critically important to understand how physical, futures, and forward gas markets work and how pricing is determined. That reality was emphasized almost exactly a year ago when physical spot prices for U.S. natural gas had their most volatile and bizarre weeks ever as Winter Storm Uri sent a blast of bitter-cold, icy weather down the middle of the country, wreaking havoc on gas infrastructure just when heating demand was at its highest. Prices in the Northeast, which normally see winter spikes, barely reacted, while prices across the Midcontinent and Texas rocketed to record-shattering levels, above $1,000/MMBtu. The events of the Deep Freeze of February 2021 have since brought renewed scrutiny to the various aspects of the gas and power markets, and a need among legislators, regulators and everyone who deals with energy commodity markets to understand how gas is traded in the U.S. and how prices are set. We’re here to help. So, in today’s RBN blog, we begin a deep dive into the process, quirks and idiosyncrasies of U.S. gas pricing.
Monday, 2/21/2022
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
It burns just like propane, smells just like propane, and gets transported just like propane. But instead of being extracted at gas processing plants or refineries, it is produced from renewable feedstocks like used cooking oil or soybean oil, and so it has a low carbon intensity. That means it is eligible for low-carbon fuel credits, like those available in California. Renewable propane has been around for years but has never gotten much traction due to a combination of technical and economic issues. Now that is changing, with a deal announced last week by a major propane retailer and a biorefiner showing the way to a win-win-win for the producer, the marketer, and the environment. In today’s RBN blog, we begin a deep-dive series on where renewable propane comes from, why it has been a challenge to get the market going, and what changes may create significant opportunities across the renewable propane value chain.
Sunday, 2/20/2022
Category:
Renewables
The illusion of a smooth energy transition was swept away in 2021, with the drive toward decarbonization running headlong into the reality of energy markets. It is now clear that the transition and its effects are permeating all aspects of supply and demand, from the chaos in European natural gas, to producer capital restraint in the oil patch, to the rising impact of renewable fuels and, of course, the escalating roadblocks to pipeline construction. Gone are the days when traditional energy markets operated independently of the energy transition. Today the markets for crude oil, natural gas, and NGLs are inextricably tied to renewables, decarbonization, and sustainability. It’s simply impossible to understand energy market behavior without having a solid grasp of how these factors are tied together. That is what School of Energy Spring 2022 is all about! In today’s RBN blog — a blatant advertorial — we’ll highlight how our upcoming conference integrates existing market dynamics with prospects for the energy transition.
Thursday, 2/17/2022
Category:
Renewables
There is a lot we don’t know about how the energy transition might play out over the next couple of decades. One thing that we can say with a high degree of certainty, however, is that the big run-up in wind and solar generating capacity in recent years is just the beginning — a lot more wind farms and solar arrays will be developed through the 2020s and ’30s, as will many, many energy-storage batteries. Another good bet is that as the portfolios of wind and solar developers grow, they will need help in maintaining, upgrading, and replacing their assets from a newly emerging type of company: the clean energy services provider. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss wind and solar’s role in the energy transition and the types of services these new companies might provide.
Wednesday, 2/16/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
The gradual increase in Western Canada’s natural gas production in recent years has been powered by the highly prolific Montney formation, a vast unconventional resource that straddles the Alberta/British Columbia border. With Western Canadian gas price benchmarks at multi-year highs and producers enjoying their best financial position in ages, it would seem logical to expect more gas production growth from the Montney in the future. However, a recent ruling by the BC Supreme Court could negatively affect the pace of well developments and jeopardize future growth in the Montney formation. In today’s RBN blog, we consider this possibility.
Tuesday, 2/15/2022
Category:
Natural Gas
Even as winter starts to wind down, global natural gas prices remain elevated as rising tensions between Russia and the Western world have destabilized European energy markets and pushed LNG, and U.S. LNG in particular, to center stage. From a markets perspective, the story of the past year has been high global gas prices — a strong incentive for LNG producers to push production facilities to operate at peak capacity and produce additional cargoes. The tight market has also spurred demand for new long-term sales and purchase agreements (SPAs), creating momentum for a potential new wave of LNG development. But while gas prices in Europe and Asia have been elevated all year, they have not been elevated evenly. The Asia-Europe price spread has swung dramatically from favoring Asia last spring and summer to favoring Europe this winter, and U.S. export destinations have swung with it. Last summer, almost no destination-flexible LNG produced in the U.S. was landing in Europe and now Europe is consuming U.S. LNG at record levels. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how global price spreads impact U.S. LNG export destinations and what the strength in European demand means for the future of LNG development.