Expanded energy development in Alaska has been a priority since President Trump returned to office. We review the moves and how they fit into plans to accelerate Arctic exploration and development.
LPG and ethane exports out of the U.S. continue to grow rapidly and are expected to reach 3.4 MMb/d by 2030. They are also critical parts of a plan by Enterprise Products Partners to expand its total liquid hydrocarbon exports to 100 MMbbl per month (100 MMb/month), a roughly 50% increase from current levels for crude oil, LPG and ethane, refined products and petchems. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll take a closer look at Enterprise’s LPG and ethane exports and how much they need to grow to reach the company’s ambitious goal.
One of the most anticipated and potentially impactful refinery startups in North America in years is the Dos Bocas project (officially the Olmeca Refinery), a 340 Mb/d plant under development by Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in the southeastern state of Tabasco. The project was seen as the cornerstone of Pemex’s plans to reduce Mexico’s dependence on the U.S. for refined fuels. Construction began in 2019 with startup originally scheduled for 2022, but that timeline was never really feasible, and the Mexican government has issued multiple public statements since mid-2023 proclaiming that construction was complete and startup was imminent. However, almost a year has passed and there is no indication that any meaningful operations have occurred. So how close is Dos Bocas to startup and, more importantly, full (or close to full) production? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll provide our views on those vitally important questions.
Whether it’s crude oil, natural gas or some other buried treasure, there’s one piece of advice from Indiana Jones that still rings true — finding it is never as easy as “X marks the spot.” Well-site preparations and drilling can take long enough on their own, but that doesn’t account for the time it takes to ensure — or at least raise the odds — that those all-important hydrocarbons will actually be found. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how seismic surveys are conducted and the key steps in permitting and well-site preparation.
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.
After enduring 2015-16 it is about time for some good news, right? And that’s just what 2017 is shaping up to be—a relatively good news year for energy markets. But don’t go crazy with this. The key word in that sentence is “relatively’” —which means better than 2015-16, but if you are looking for that other “R” word (“recovery”) you won’t see it here. Crude prices will be up some, but nothing like the first few years of this decade. Natural gas and NGL prices will be stronger too. But both may have to wait still another year before seeing a real upswing in 2018. Nevertheless, 2017 is looking good for most of the energy market. Not for everyone, mind you. Many will struggle because their assets are in the wrong places, they are at the wrong end of the food chain, or they were simply unprepared for this new market reality. How will you know the difference between the winners and losers? Well of course, by looking deeply into the RBN crystal ball to see what 2017—Year of the Rooster—has in store for us. Cock-a-doodle-do!
A long-standing tradition at RBN is our annual Top 10 RBN Energy Prognostications blog, where we lay out the most important developments we see for the year ahead. Unlike so many forecasters, we also look back to see how we did with our forecasts the previous year. That’s right! We actually check our work. Usually we can get that all into a single blog. But a lot will be coming at us in 2017, so this time around we are splitting our Prognostications into two pieces. Tomorrow’s blog will look into the RBN crystal ball one more time to see what 2017 has in store for energy markets. But today we look back. Back to what we posted on January 3, 2016. Recall back in those days that crude production had not started to decline materially, West Texas Intermediate (WTI; the U.S. light-crude benchmark) was at $37/bbl, natural gas was $2.33/MMbtu in the middle of winter, Congress had just OK’ed crude exports, and weak exploration and production companies (E&Ps) were dropping like flies. Now let’s look at RBN’s Prognostications for 2016.
From the depths of despair in the first quarter when WTI crude collapsed to $26.21/bbl on February 11 and Henry Hub gas crashed to $1.64/MMbtu on March 3, we are back, sort of. Growth in the rig count has been nothing short of spectacular, up 249 or 62% from the low point in late May. Crude oil, natural gas and NGL prices have all more than doubled since the lows of Q1. Yes, 2016 has been quite a roller coaster ride for energy markets. Here in the RBN blogosphere, we’ve documented this saga every step of the way. Now at the end of the year, as we’ve done for the past five years, it is time to look back. Back over the past 12 months––to see which blogs have generated the most interest from you, our readers. We track the hit rate for each of our daily blogs, and the number of hits tells you a lot about what is going on in energy markets. So once again we look into the rearview mirror at the top blogs of 2016 based on numbers of website hits in “The 2016 Hydrocarbon Top 10 RBN Blogs”.
“Condensates are long and you can’t give them away … No, things have changed – condensate supply is tight and prices are running up relative to WTI … But wait wait, the oversupply is back and prices are down again.” No wonder the market’s love for condensates has faded. It’s a liquid hydrocarbon that is being buffeted by every force the market can bring to bear: declining production, lots of new committed infrastructure (stabilizers, pipelines, and splitters), wide-open export markets, volatile crack spread splitter economics -- the list goes on. Adding to this whirlwind is the fact that historically there has been limited analytical data to work with, with most condensate information buried deep inside crude production numbers from producer investor presentations and less-than-revealing Energy Information Administration (EIA) crude oil reports. But we have some new tools to help understand what’s going on, including the EIA’s new 914 crude quality data and condensate export numbers from ClipperData. Today, we continue our exploration of rapidly evolving condensate markets.
Few segments of the energy market have experienced the roller-coaster ride that U.S. condensates have been on over the past five years. Prior to 2011, U.S. condensates were a forgotten backwater of the hydrocarbon complex, mostly blended off into crude oil. Then condensates rapidly transitioned from obscurity to an oversupplied, price-discounted growth market, then to a driver of massive infrastructure investment, then to the star of the show as the only member of the U.S. crude oil family that could be exported. By mid-2014, producers and midstreamers were in love with condensates. Exports were legal and growing. New pipeline, splitter, stabilizer and export dock infrastructure was coming online. U.S. condensate markets were tightening and condensate prices were increasing. Then in one fell swoop in December 2015, Congress swept away all export restrictions on crude oil, potentially relegating U.S. condensates back to the obscurity from whence they came.
