Launch a company built around energy market fundamentals and rock & roll song titles. Then … give it away for free. Not exactly a textbook business plan. Today we turn the page. Novi Labs has acquired RBN Energy. Today’s blog is all about the logic of this deal and what it means for our customers.
Forecasting in U.S. energy markets characterized by hair-trigger price volatility, ever-improving well drilling and completion productivity, and the unraveling of old norms is a bit of a high-wire act. But just as big-tent tightrope walkers get better with practice, energy prognosticators can gain from experience––and from taking a look back at previous forecasts to see what they got right, what they may have missed, and what’s changed in the interim. Today we continue our review of a recent presentation at RBN’s School of Energy earlier this month on forecasting lessons learned.
The Shale Revolution changed everything about U.S energy markets, and in the process made forecasting the production and pricing of crude oil, natural gas and NGLs a heck of a lot harder. But we all learn from experience. In the early days of the Revolution, few could have predicted how quickly output would rise, how challenging it would be for pipeline takeaway capacity to keep up with production, or how successfully crude-by-rail would fill the gap – until that gap went away with the Revolution’s most recent phase. Comparing past forecasts to what actually happened is instructive though, and maybe––just maybe––today’s projections for the future are more informed than the forecasts of 2011 or 2013. In today’s blog we look at a recent presentation on forecasting lessons learned at RBN’s School of Energy earlier this month.
Rusty’s Introduction
As a general rule here at RBN, we try to avoid hot button issues like environmental policy. We have good friends on all sides of these issues, so our practice has been to steer clear of debates where the relationship between facts and outcomes can be subject to so much interpretation. However, today we make an exception for a blog by Keith Bailey, a highly respected leader in our industry who serves on the boards of MarkWest Energy, Aegis Insurance Services, Cloud Peak Energy, Apco International Oil and Gas, and by the way, was CEO of The Williams Companies when I worked for that company more than a few years back. Today Keith contemplates the issue of climate change from the vantage point of someone who has been around the track in energy markets and thinks deeply about the big picture issues.
