forecasts

Government forecasts are predicting a sharp drop in natural gas demand in the power sector in the coming decades based on an expectation that the renewable capacity build-out will accelerate and displace other sources. However, forecasts in the past decade have consistently and severely underestimated gas burn for power. In today’s RBN blog, we consider the pitfalls of forecasting gas consumption in a world often focused on pushing a renewables-heavy generation stack.

The November 4 decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its collaborators — collectively known as OPEC+ –– to stay the course on crude oil production surprised few and disappointed many. Officials from leading oil-consuming nations, including the U.S., Japan and India, want the group to relax its production restraint by more than the scheduled 400 Mb/d in December. They see extra crude supply as an antidote for high prices that have been hampering recovery from the global economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But OPEC+ leaders made clear that they’re in no mood to accelerate their phase-out of production cuts. They know the market pressures now elevating crude prices won’t last forever and can change unexpectedly. They also face internal strains that might weaken the quota discipline that has kept the group’s supply management intact, despite the occasional upset, for nearly five years. One of those strains is the number of OPEC+ participants already producing as much crude as they can while falling short of existing ceilings — a number that grows as the ceilings rise. Today’s RBN blog looks at oil-market expectations underlying OPEC+ members’ cautious approach and at the growing divide among those unable to keep up with output targets and the relatively few but volumetrically overpowering counterparts with capacity to spare.

No one could’ve seen the energy market disruptions of 2020 coming, and most of us are ready to write off what has been one of the most challenging years the industry has seen in a long time. Yet the events of the past year will most certainly define what unfolds in the New Year and beyond. To make sense of what 2020 will mean for the post-COVID era, we retooled and refreshed our models and forecasts to tackle the hard questions facing U.S. crude oil, natural gas, and NGL markets. As it turns out, beyond the immediate chaos of the pandemic, there is a new order taking shape, and that’s what we laid out in the RBN Fall Virtual School of Energy, sharing our results and the Excel spreadsheets behind the models to get you ready for what’s coming. Some of what we expected has come to fruition, and we still think that there is a pretty good chance that the rest will unfold in the months and years ahead. If you weren’t able to join us for the live broadcast, we invite you to sit by the fire, put your feet up and dig in over the holidays. The entire 14+ hours of streaming content, plus slide decks and spreadsheets, are available online. Today’s advertorial blog provides highlights from our key findings and the overall conference curriculum.

In an energy market filled with incalculable uncertainty, it is no surprise that most of the focus is on the short term: production shut-ins, collapsing demand, refinery unit shutdowns, ballooning storage inventories and continually weakening prices. But even in the face of such dire circumstances in the weeks just ahead, there remains a cautious optimism — relatively speaking — for the resumption of some kind of new normal on the other side of COVID. You can see that expectation in the numbers, with the WTI May 2020 contract settling on Friday at $18.27/bbl, but the May 2021 contract up to $35.52/bbl. Granted, that May 2021 price would have been catastrophic if viewed in January 2020, but now it’s a bullish 95% increase over the front month.  It is that shift in perspective that underlies the fundamentals content that we developed for our two-day Spring 2020 Virtual School of Energy, held last week in the cloud: how things were viewed BEFORE the meltdown, and how things look AFTER — over the next five years. Did you miss the conference? Not to worry. The entire 14 hours of content are available online in our encore edition. It’s almost like being there! Today’s advertorial blog reviews some of the most important findings we covered at School of Energy and summarizes our overall virtual conference curriculum.