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Gimme Three Steps - The Top 10 RBN Blogs of 2024

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. 

Posting a daily blog focused on a singular subject and blasting it to an audience of 45,000 readers gives us a unique opportunity to gauge significant market trends by tracking readership metrics. Each year for the past 11 years, we have looked back to see which topics rank at the top of the hit parade and posted an end-of-year blog titled “Top 10” to distill common themes from what amounts to crowd-sourced market intelligence. Today’s blog is our latest edition of this tradition.

Just like any year-end Top 10 list, we’ll start with #10 and work our way up to #1.

Here Are the Top 10 blogs of 2024 (in reverse order, by number of website hits):

#10 – 8/6/24 – Crude and NGLs: Are You Ready For A Dogfight – Gulf Coast Export Terminals Vie For NGL And Crude Oil Market

Competition among Gulf Coast crude oil and NGL export terminals really heated up in 2024. Exports of crude and NGLs, which grew from a combined 1 MMb/d in 2016 to over 6 MMb/d in 2024, fueled a heated rivalry among Corpus Christi, Houston and Port Arthur/Nederland. Corpus had dominated crude exports in recent years thanks to key pipeline expansions and the cost advantages of partially loading VLCCs at Enbridge’s and Gibson’s facilities in the Corpus/Ingleside area. But in 2024, Houston made a strong comeback as pipeline capacity from the Permian to Corpus maxed out, forcing barrels to other destination markets — mainly Houston. A big question is how this will continue to play out, especially if a new offshore single-point mooring (SPM) terminal project capable of fully loading VLCCs gets approved. Over time, that would dramatically reshape the crude oil export landscape. On the NGL export front, Houston has historically been the leader, but new infrastructure projects from Energy Transfer and Enterprise in the Port Arthur/Nederland/Neches River region are expected to shift the competitive balance. This fierce competition underscores how connectivity, infrastructure and economics reshape U.S. liquids exports. 

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