Price Volatility

Producers in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays could be moving a lot more natural gas into New England, if only there was enough pipeline capacity to get it there. An increasingly gas-hungry neighbor to the nation’s most prolific production area, New England has added precious little capacity to transport gas, and the fates of game-changing pipeline projects that have been proposed hang in the balance. The region’s unique gas-delivery challenges, their market impacts and possible solutions are the subject of RBN Energy’s newly released Drill Down report, “Please Come To Boston—New England’s Ongoing Gas-Supply Dilemma”. Today, we provide a preview, and highlight some of the report’s findings.

There’s been a lot of talk--and angst—this summer and early fall about the flood of crude oil headed to the Houston area from the Eagle Ford, the Permian Basin and other burgeoning oil-production regions. The angst seems worst for crude producers, who rightly wonder whether Houston’s looming shortfall of storage capacity will further disrupt crude oil logistics, contribute to more downward pressure on crude prices, or worse.  Understanding what’s ahead requires an in-depth look at the changing crude flows into Houston and that is precisely the subject of RBN Energy’s latest drill-down report. In today’s blog, we provide highlights of the report, which is available for download by RBN Backstage Pass holders, and discuss how the shift from waterborne to pipeline delivery of crude already is affecting the market.

Looking out over the next year and a half to 2016, Houston crude storage capacity looks to be lower than necessary to meet operational needs. With continuing increases in pipeline crude streams headed into the area in the next six months, we could see supply disruptions with consequences for price volatility. Probable victims of these disruptions would be producers looking to find a home at Houston refineries for their production. The solution is to build more storage but the market is not yet sending alarm signals to that effect.  Today we conclude our series on Houston storage capacity.