

The budget reconciliation bill signed into law July 4 by President Trump — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — dramatically scales back a number of clean-energy tax credits and adds a new layer of complexity for some projects, leading to a lot of doom and gloom around clean-energy initiatives, but the new legislation is a big positive for the carbon-capture industry. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how changes to the 45Q tax credit could help advance carbon-capture efforts while also providing a boost to producers of crude oil and blue hydrogen.
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.
Northeast gas demand moved upward during the week ended July 15 relative to the prior week, driven by strong power demand as weather in the region was significantly hotter than the 5-year average. Overall Northeast demand averaged 19.1 Bcf/d, up 0.8 Bcf/d week-on-week.
US oil and gas rig count increased this week for the first time since April, climbing to 544 for the week ending July 18, a gain of seven vs. last week according to Baker Hughes data.
Report | Title | Published |
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Chart Toppers | Chart Toppers - July 17, 2025 | 2 days 16 hours ago |
TradeView Daily Data | TradeView Daily Data - July 16, 2025 | 3 days 6 hours ago |
TradeView Daily Data | TradeView Daily Data - July 16, 2025 | 3 days 6 hours ago |
U.S. Propane Billboard | U.S. Propane Billboard Weekly - July 16, 2025 | 3 days 8 hours ago |
Crude Oil Billboard | Crude Oil Billboard Weekly - July 16, 2025 | 3 days 9 hours ago |
U.S. energy policy was at the heart of the 2024 presidential campaign in more ways than one. Many voters cited economic concerns in their decision to return President Trump to the White House, with energy costs top of mind, but U.S. energy policy impacts everything from domestic manufacturing and decarbonization efforts to resource development and international trade. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the executive orders issued by Trump on the first day of his second term and how they fit into his plan for the U.S. to exert “energy dominance.”
Are you ready for Trumpian turmoil? Regardless of your opinion of the president, you’ve got to acknowledge he’ll be shaking things up. In fact, with talk of a tariff blitz poised to disrupt global trade, mass deportations on deck, notions like reclaiming the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and even annexing Canada, the turmoil is already well underway. And of course, energy markets will be front and center, with “Drill, baby, drill” the stated oil and gas policy du jour. With so much uncertainty ahead, it’s impossible to predict what will happen in 2025, right? Nah. All we need to do is stick out our collective RBN necks one more time, peer into our crystal ball, and see what the new year has in store for us.
Alaska North Slope (ANS) crude oil production has been sliding for years — decades really — but that is poised to change in the second half of the 2020s. Two long-planned ANS projects — Pikka and Willow — are slated to start up in 2026 and 2029, respectively. By the early 2030s, these and other projects in the works could return North Slope production to levels not seen since the turn of the century. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these projects and our new, long-term forecast for ANS oil production — a topic in our upcoming Future of Fuels report.
Are you ready for Trumpian turmoil? Regardless of your opinion of the president-elect, you’ve got to acknowledge he’ll be shaking things up. In fact, with talk of a tariff blitz poised to disrupt global trade, mass deportations on deck, notions like reclaiming the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and even annexing Canada, the turmoil is already well underway. And of course, energy markets will be front and center, with “Drill, baby, drill” the stated oil and gas policy du jour. With so much uncertainty ahead, it’s impossible to predict what will happen in 2025, right? Nah. All we need to do is stick out our collective RBN necks one more time, peer into our crystal ball, and see what the new year has in store for us.
As 2023 wrapped up one year ago, it seemed there were a lot of moving parts out there in energy markets. Capacity constraints were back on the radar screen, and while prices appeared stable, they were overshadowed by the looming threat of escalating conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Opportunities abounded for energy projects, including natural gas storage, export terminals, and just about any pipeline that moved supply to the Gulf Coast. However, challenges kept popping up, from project delays like those faced by Canada’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX) to concerns about excessive nitrogen in Permian natural gas and what eventually evolved into the Biden administration's LNG “pause.”
Many of this year’s most popular RBN blogs gravitated toward familiar energy market themes — rising exports, shifts in oil production, weak natural gas prices, surprising NGL pricing dynamics and the like. However, we also noted a significant uptick in interest in topics beyond the traditional energy realm, including hydrogen, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), electric vehicles (EVs) and even the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers. It’s not that RBNers have shifted their focus away from oil, gas and NGL markets. Rather, it reflects a growing recognition that the renewable and alternative energy landscape — fueled by regulations, subsidies and tax incentives — is reshaping the energy world. For anyone in the energy business, staying one step ahead (or maybe three steps) means understanding how these trends intersect with traditional energy markets. In 2024, our readers made it clear: The interplay between renewable and conventional energy commodities is becoming increasingly important.
A primary objective of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), when it was expanded back in 2007, was to stimulate by 2022 the production of at least 16 billion gallons/year of gasoline and diesel made from cellulosic biomass in conversion plants resembling small refineries. After getting lots of headlines in the early days of renewable fuels, that vision faded into the background and attention shifted to the use of ethanol in gasoline and the production of diesel from soybean oil, but cellulosic biofuels — non-food crops and waste biomass like animal manure, corn cobs, corn stalks, straw and wood chips — are back in the spotlight thanks to a regulatory quirk. In today’s RBN blog, the first in a series, we review the unusual history of the D3 Renewable Identification Number (RIN), the subsidy designed to stimulate cellulosic biofuel production, and the recent impact on heavy-duty trucking.
More than 15 years into the Shale Era, the U.S. refining sector’s response to burgeoning production of light, sweet crude oil continues. Earlier this month, Chevron completed the long-planned, $400 million renovation and expansion of the century-old refinery in Pasadena, TX, which the company acquired from Petrobras in 2019. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the refinery’s extensive history, why Chevron bought the facility five years ago, and how the just-finished project will enable the integrated oil and gas giant to make fuller use of its Permian oil bounty.
The U.S. is still years away from establishing a national carbon tax or cap-and-trade system — and it’s certainly possible it will never take either step. But there are state and regional cap-and-trade programs in place to incentivize refiners and others to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In today’s RBN blog, our fourth and final on carbon emissions and the refining sector, we look at state and international efforts to reduce GHG emissions and their prospective impact on the U.S. refining industry.
It’s relatively common along the U.S. Gulf Coast to use underground salt domes to store crude oil, natural gas, mixed NGLs and so-called NGL “purity products” like ethane and propane. There are also a handful of salt cavern storage facilities in Kansas, Michigan, New York and Virginia. But in the Rockies and the West Coast states they’re rare as hen’s teeth, one of the few examples being Sawtooth Caverns, a one-of-a-kind facility in Utah that not only stores propane and butanes but also gasoline and diesel. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss Sawtooth Caverns and its increasing role in the sprawling region’s NGL and refined products markets.
There’s been a lot of speculation about whether the pace of electric vehicle (EV) adoption has slowed, with JD Power now expecting EVs to make up 9% of U.S. new-car sales in 2024, down from its earlier estimate of 12.4% but still up from 7% in 2023. The group remains bullish on EVs in the long term, expecting market share to reach 36% by 2030 and 58% by 2035. The forecast from RBN’s Refined Fuels Analytics (RFA) group forecast has been — and continues to be — more conservative than most but still anticipates EVs will reach 50% of U.S. new-car sales by the early 2040s. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at what drives these forecasts and the anticipated impacts on gasoline demand.
Weak refining margins, rising regulatory compliance costs, softening demand for gasoline and the push for lower-carbon alternatives like batteries and renewable diesel have each contributed to a steady decline in California’s refining capacity the past few years. Now, Phillips 66’s plan to idle its 139-Mb/d Los Angeles Refinery in Q4 2025 will leave the Golden State with only seven conventional refineries producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — a couple of dozen fewer than it had 40 years ago. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll put P66’s recent announcement in context and discuss the likelihood of additional refinery closures.
Oxygen-containing gasoline additives called oxygenates, including ethanol, have provided an octane boost to the U.S. gasoline pool since 2000. This has allowed refineries to reduce the octane of refinery-produced gasoline, which increases their gasoline production capacity and efficiency while simultaneously helping achieve the goals for cleaner, lower-carbon fuels derived from domestic renewable feedstocks. A new approach to gasoline formulation promises to take this “sharing” of the octane load much further to exploit the unique octane-enhancing qualities of ethanol, although there are some real-world challenges to wider implementation. In today’s RBN blog, we explain what’s behind the concept of “hydrogen-rich” gasoline.
As the Atlantic hurricane season churns out storms that regularly threaten the U.S. Gulf Coast, it can be easy to forget that the East Coast — an important refining center and refined-products market — is not immune from their impact. A dozen years ago this month, Superstorm Sandy roared ashore in New Jersey, wreaking havoc with storm surges and fierce winds that stretched for 1,000 miles. While the East Coast lacks the Gulf Coast’s concentration of energy infrastructure, it is home to the critical New York Harbor (NYH) market. In today’s RBN blog, we will examine how storms have affected the refining sector on the East Coast.
There’s been a lot of speculation about whether the pace of electric vehicle (EV) adoption has slowed, with JD Power now expecting EVs to make up 9% of U.S. new-car sales in 2024, down from its earlier estimate of 12.4% but still up from 7% in 2023. The group remains bullish on EVs in the long term, expecting market share to reach 36% by 2030 and 58% by 2035. The forecast from RBN’s Refined Fuels Analytics (RFA) group forecast has been — and continues to be — more conservative than most but still anticipates EVs will reach 50% of U.S. new-car sales by the early 2040s. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at what drives these forecasts and the anticipated impacts on gasoline demand.