There’s a lot to like about the Uinta Basin’s waxy crude, but ramping up its production and use in refinery feedstock slates will require multimillion-dollar investments in rail terminals, special rail cars, heated storage, refinery equipment and other midstream and downstream infrastructure. A natural concern for E&Ps, midstreamers, and refiners is whether the basin has sufficient long-term staying power to justify the upfront costs and commitments. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, a machine-learning-based analysis can provide many of the answers by assessing the basin’s long-term outlook under various scenarios.
Crude Oil Production
Tuesday, 5/06/2025
In just a few years, the Uinta Basin has morphed from a quirky, waxy-crude curiosity to a burgeoning shale play with production north of 170 Mb/d and initial production (IP) rates that compare favorably with the best wells in the Permian. Still, there are a host of logistical challenges associated with transporting waxy crude out of the basin and questions have remained about the Uinta’s potential for growth and its staying power. In today’s RBN blog, we begin an in-depth look at the basin — with an assist from our friends at Novi Labs, whose innovative use of AI and machine learning provides valuable insights.
Tuesday, 1/14/2025
In just a few days, President-elect Trump will return to office, determined to fulfill his many campaign promises, including his high-profile commitment to ease the regulatory burden on oil and gas producers so they can “drill, baby, drill.” Significantly ramping up production would likely bring down consumer prices for gasoline, diesel and other fuels — a noble goal — but it would also be at odds with the conservative, financially disciplined strategies that now guide many oil majors and oil-focused E&Ps. With the prospects for “drill, baby, drill” uncertain at best, and the correlations between oil prices, rig counts and production volumes less reliable than they used to be, how can we develop a production forecast? In today’s RBN blog, we explain what we do — oh, and we share our forecast with you, for free!
Friday, 9/27/2024
The Denver-Julesburg Basin isn’t the Permian — no argument there. But like its much bigger brother in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the DJ Basin has been a hotbed of M&A in both the upstream and midstream sectors. Among DJ producers, Chevron, Civitas Resources and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) are now the top dogs, with big hopes for the future there. And, as we’ll discuss in today’s RBN blog, a handful of midstreamers have taken on leading roles in crude oil and gas gathering (and processing) in Weld County, CO, the heart of the basin.
Monday, 9/23/2024
Thanks largely to the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin, Colorado ranks fourth among the 50 states in crude oil production, topped only by Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota — and, if it were a state, the offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM). It’s also noteworthy that more than 80% of Colorado’s oil production comes from one county — Weld, the heart of the DJ and an hour’s drive northeast of Denver — and that a lot of consolidation has been happening in the DJ’s upstream and midstream sectors. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the DJ Basin and the increasing concentration among the producers and midstreamers active there.
Monday, 8/19/2024
Guyana’s crude oil production is surging, a trend that is expected to continue through the rest of the decade, and with no domestic refining industry its exports are booming. Shipments of Guyana’s medium-density, sweet-ish crude to the U.S. have ramped up and are increasingly making their way to the West Coast, which relies on imports given its lack of easy access to domestic shale crudes and limited regional output. In today's RBN blog, the second in a series, we‘ll examine where Guyana’s barrels are ending up and how they stack up against competing grades.
Wednesday, 7/24/2024
The Biden administration has been on a mission for more than a year to restock the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which was tapped at unprecedented levels in an effort to keep crude oil and refined product prices under control after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 disrupted energy flows globally. But if returning all of the released 180 MMbbl and replenishing the SPR to pre-war levels was the plan, they’ve got a long way to go. In today’s RBN blog, we examine the steps the administration has taken to replenish the reserve and the headwinds it faces.
Friday, 5/24/2024
On the surface, the Bakken story in the mid-2020s may seem as boring as dirt. The boom times of 2009-14 and 2017-19 are ancient history. Crude oil production has been rangebound near 1.2 MMb/d — well below its peak five years ago. And that output has been getting gassier over time, creating natural gas and NGL takeaway constraints that have put a lid on oil production growth. But don’t buy into the view that the Bakken is yesterday’s news. Beneath the surface (sometimes literally), the U.S.’s second-largest crude oil production area is undergoing a major transformation that includes E&P consolidation, production (and producers) going private, the drilling of 3- and (soon) 4-mile laterals, novel efforts to eliminate flaring, and even a producer-led push for CO2-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR). As we’ll discuss in today’s RBN blog, these changes and others may well breathe new life into the Bakken and significantly improve the environmental profile of the hydrocarbons produced there.
Monday, 5/13/2024
For the past decade, producers in the Permian Basin have been the driving force in domestic production growth, but lately there has been a hard-to-miss slowdown in incremental production rates for crude, gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs). While Permian producers are primarily motivated by crude oil economics, those volumes also come with a lot of associated natural gas and NGLs. These commodities are therefore fundamentally interlinked. So if there’s a hangup with one, the effects will be felt across the upstream and then cascade downstream. There is a lot of money riding on these markets and the impacts of an extended slowdown in the Permian could be monumental, not just in the energy industry but also in the broader U.S. and global economies. In today’s RBN blog, we will examine what’s to blame for plateauing production in the U.S.’s most prolific basin and gauge what its big-picture implications might be.
Tuesday, 4/09/2024
Growth for growth’s sake. In the early years of the Shale Revolution, that’s what it was all about. Backed by billions of dollars in Wall Street borrowings, E&Ps plowed vast piles of cash into increasing production. It was the era of “Drill baby drill!” And we all know what happened next. Rabid production growth contributed to oversupply and crude oil prices crashed. But resilient E&Ps clawed their way back by adopting what we now know as capital discipline, initially in fits and starts. Then, after the COVID price meltdown, they went all-in, elevating free cash flow generation to Job #1 and returning a significant portion of cash flow to shareholders. It worked! Financial markets started to think of E&Ps more as yield vehicles than growth plays. But it is in the DNA of oil and gas producers to grow. And now that U.S. crude prices are above $85/bbl, could we see a backslide toward organic growth — a 2024 rendition of “Drill baby drill”? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore the historical context of E&Ps’ transition to capital discipline and what it tells us about what’s coming next.
Good Enough - Most E&P 2023 Profits Dip To Solid Levels After Record 2022 But Gas Producers Struggle
Thursday, 4/04/2024
U.S. E&Ps have just concluded discussions of their Q4 and full-year 2023 results and, as usual, the view of analysts and investors can be summed up by one question: What have you done for me lately? But while the collective results of the 44 producers we track were off from the previous quarter and a record 2022, there’s a lot to be said for how well they held up through a period of unusually low natural gas prices. In fact, if you take a step or two back for a longer-term perspective you’d see a strong historical performance that suggests E&Ps really have learned how to do well through commodity price ups and downs. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the 2023 results of a representative group of major U.S. producers and look ahead to how 2024 may shake out.
Friday, 3/15/2024
It’s that time of year, folks! March Madness is upon us — time to reboot the office pool and fill out your brackets. And not just for the NCAA Tournament field announced Sunday night, but for the natural gas pipeline projects out of the Permian you think will make it to the Elite Eight or even the Final Four. Matterhorn Express is like the UConn of the bunch as the reigning men’s champ with a chance of repeating — it’s already under construction and slated to come online later this year — and the odds for a Gulf Coast Express expansion look mighty good too, just like record scorer Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes are hoping to build on last year’s run to the women’s championship game. And don’t forget Energy Transfer’s Warrior and Targa’s Apex! Their names alone suggest a fightin’ spirit and a desire to make it to the top. But as we all know from our past bets on the Big Dance, there’s no such thing as a sure thing, especially in the topsy-turvy world of midstream project development, and it’s entirely possible an unknown — the pipeline equivalent of a 16th seed — will be among those cutting down the nets. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the need for new gas pipeline egress from the Permian and assess the pros and cons of the projects that have a bid.
Monday, 2/05/2024
Brutal arctic cold may have chilled broad swaths of the U.S. last month, but the scorching pace of upstream M&A activity continued to be red hot, with nearly $20 billion in deals announced in January after a record-setting 2023. Last year’s transaction value totaled an astounding $192 billion, a mark 79% higher than the previous 10-year high and more than the previous three years combined. Why the surge? A wide range of factors influenced corporate decisions to grow through acquisitions rather than organic investment, including commodity prices, equity values, debt levels, operating costs, and production trends. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll analyze M&A trends through several statistical lenses and provide some insights into 2024 activity.
Friday, 12/01/2023
Crude oil production in the offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM) increased by more than 50% from 2013 to 2019, an extraordinary period of growth supported by new discoveries, new offshore platforms and new subsea tiebacks. Then, battered by Covid and major hurricanes, GOM output stumbled in 2020 and 2021, twice falling to less than 1.1 MMb/d, barely half the all-time mark of 2.04 MMb/d achieved in August 2019. More recently, production in the Gulf has been rebounding. But despite these gains — and a relatively mild 2023 hurricane season in the central and western Gulf — the region faces new challenges, including federal leasing delays, a significant oil spill, and an endangered species of sea giants known as Rice’s whales.
Friday, 11/24/2023
The cacophony of Black Friday promotions may make us all wonder if the “giving thanks” part of the fourth Thursday of November has been subsumed by rampant consumerism. But we suspect that E&P executives sat down to more traditional celebrations of gratitude as the upstream part of the oil and gas industry rebounded nicely in Q3 from five consecutive periods of declining profits and cash flows. In today’s RBN blog, we analyze Q3 2023 E&P earnings and cash flows and provide some perspective on the past and future profitability of U.S. oil and gas producers.