Shale revolution

It’s well understood today that the U.S. natural gas market turned from potential domestic shortages to major LNG exports thanks to the Shale Revolution. What is not so well remembered is that the dramatic shift in the U.S. gas market wasn’t widely understood at the time and took several years to be accepted by the energy industry. In today’s RBN blog, we turn our attention to the beginnings of the Shale Revolution and how it allowed the U.S. to evolve into the world’s largest LNG exporter. 

Since the advent of the Shale Revolution, the U.S. has experienced a massive surge in oil, gas and NGL production — creating a bonanza of opportunities. But the attitudes of energy companies, owners and investors have shifted from “drill-baby-drill” to a focus on returning value to shareholders. It’s an evolution reminiscent of the economic concept known as the product life cycle. And that got us thinking. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the introduction, growth and maturity phases of the Shale Revolution, assess where we are today, and explore a couple of potential paths forward. 

In 2019, there has been a significant shift in crude oil and natural gas markets. Prices have remained stubbornly low, even when faced with the risk of significant turmoil like the Saudi drone attacks. Investors are far less forgiving, and energy-related equity values continue to lag most other sectors, despite most companies returning more of their earnings to shareholders. Oil and gas producers are focused on their sweetest of sweet spots, wringing every crumb of financial return from their investments. The risk-return equation has changed. All this makes now a good time to examine the strategies and tactics necessary for survival in this challenging phase of the Shale Era. That is especially true for the players who seem to be doing everything right, because some of the worst management mistakes can occur when performance is good.

After spending the past few years on the backburner with declining production volumes, the Haynesville Shale natural gas play, which straddles the Northeast Texas-Louisiana border, is back in the headlines. Rig counts in the region have doubled in the Haynesville in the past six months or so. Exco Resources—which has four rigs operating there currently—last week said it is divesting its Eagle Ford assets in favor of boosting drilling investment in the Haynesville. At the same time, there’s a new crop of operators in the play dedicated specifically to drilling in the Haynesville. While total basin production volumes have yet to take off, all signs point to a Haynesville resurrection of sorts. But there are also early clues that much has changed since the first go-round and the drilling profile of today’s Haynesville is likely to look much different than it did nearly 10 years ago. Today we begin a look at RBN’s latest analysis of production economics in the Haynesville Shale.

Let’s face it — for producers, the last couple of years have stung, with low-slung energy prices allowing little-to-no returns on drilling investments in most parts of the major shale basins. A side effect of the low price environment in the past two years has been the shrinking geographic footprint of the Shale Revolution. About 50% of all onshore rigs in the Lower 48 currently are clustered in the top 20 counties for drilling activity. In effect, this also means a lot of the new production growth will come primarily from these same 20 counties, with the potential for all sorts of implications for infrastructure and regional price relationships. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at rig counts by county to see how much the geographic focus of the Shale Revolution has narrowed.

<p>Energy market volatility in 2015 was neither the result of random market fluctuations nor geopolitical orchestration.&nbsp; The market pressures had been building for years, as one market event triggered another, leading inexorably to the carnage of Q4 2015.&nbsp; In fact, there were thirty such market eve</p>

Did you miss our School of Energy a few weeks back in Houston? Not a problem! The entire School of Energy conference is now available online in streaming video format. The conference video, presentation slides and spreadsheet models are available for purchase as individual Modules or as a full conference package. It’s the next best thing to being there!  School of Energy is unlike other natural gas, NGL or crude oil conferences.  It combines all three!  And the curriculum includes a comprehensive analysis of current energy markets and in-depth instruction on how to use RBN spreadsheet models covering everything from production economics to gas processing.  We walk through key developments for each of the three hydrocarbons including the increasingly important links between them.  Fair warning – today’s blog is a blatant advertorial. 

The CME/NYMEX Henry Hub natural gas futures contract turns 25 years old this year. The contract is now the third largest physical commodity futures market in the world. The price of virtually every Btu of gas sold in North America is linked in some way to the underlying physical hub at Henry. But over the past five years shale gas has revolutionized North American supply and changed the shape of delivery patterns. These trends have altered the flow of physical gas through Henry Hub and could jeapordize the success of the futures contract. Today we look at  why Henry Hub has been so successful.

Back In the 1980s and 90’s, significant crude imports began to make up for declining US domestic production. During that era supertankers delivering crude to the Gulf Coast provided a kind of floating storage buffer that could absorb downstream disruptions in supply and demand. Nowadays Gulf Coast refineries are increasingly being supplied with domestic crude by pipeline.  Today we begin a new deep dive series looking at the evolution of Gulf Coast crude storage needs in the shale era.

Consistent lower natural gas prices resulting from the boom in shale production are expected to fuel a major increase in industrial demand over the coming years. RBN expects that sector’s demand to increase by 5 Bcf/d from 19 Bcf/d in 2013 to 24 Bcf/d in 2025. There have been numerous announcements of new plant builds and expanded capacity projects in primary industries. Less well documented are the wider ramifications of abundant shale natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) supplies for US manufacturing industry as a whole. Today in the first of a two part series Taylor Robinson from PLG Consulting outlines the changes underpinning a new industrial renaissance.