RBN Energy Blogcast

The Marcellus/Utica has massive natural gas reserves, but daily, weekly and annual production in the three-state shale play is limited by three key factors: in-region demand, takeaway capacity and gas prices. In recent years, the basin’s output has been rangebound between 34 and 36 Bcf/d and Appalachian producers see only modest gains in 2025. But a handful of pipeline projects and rising gas dema...

It’s shaping up to be an incredible year for U.S. LNG growth, with record levels of feedgas demand and exports along with progress on the regulatory front, as the Trump administration has cleared away hurdles that had previously stalled project development. Now, Cheniere Energy has announced a positive final investment decision (FID) on its Corpus Christi Midscale expansion. In today’s RBN blog, w...

Canada’s energy industry has seen more than its share of merger-and-acquisition activity this year. The latest big deal involves the midstream sector, with Keyera agreeing on June 17 to buy Plains Midstream Canada’s NGL business in Canada for C$5.15 billion ($3.75 billion). The purchase will transform Alberta-focused Keyera into a nationwide NGL machine and caps its very busy first half of 2025. I...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took several steps in June to slash red tape and speed the construction of natural gas projects in the U.S. interstate and export markets. This is the latest in state and federal efforts to reduce the years-long legal battles around energy infrastructure and quicken the development of vital projects such as pipelines and LNG terminals. In today’...

The details of a trade deal between the U.S. and China, announced June 26 by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and confirmed by China, remain sparse. Once they are finalized, the requirement for U.S. exporters to obtain a Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) license to send ethane to China should be lifted, but the effect on trade flows is already apparent. In today’s RBN blog, we review the impa...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) for 2026-27 did more than just set renewable fuel mandates for the next two years, they included dramatic shifts in the way that imported fuels and feedstocks are handled and raised the likelihood of higher compliance costs during a time in which the federal government has been focused on keeping prices under...

Since its beginning in western Pennsylvania 166 years ago, the oil and gas industry has been on a relentless quest to unlock more hydrocarbons. And for years, the focus has been on drilling more productively, not just drilling more wells. The techniques that have evolved since the start of the Shale Revolution have led to rapid increases in the length of horizontal laterals, boosting initial produ...

The summer movie season opened with the latest — and reportedly last — entry in the Tom Cruise-propelled “Mission: Impossible” franchise called “The Final Reckoning.” That title reminded us that, to E&P executives, the commodity price crash at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 must have seemed like the final blow in a series of financial crises that brought many of their companies to the verge...

For several years now, the biggest hurdle to natural gas production growth in the Marcellus/Utica was takeaway constraints — there simply wasn’t enough capacity on gas pipelines out of Appalachia to support a significant bump-up in regional output. Things have been changing though. The Mountain Valley Pipeline and a slew of expansion projects along Transco are allowing increasing volumes of gas to...

Energy-market risks abound. Israeli attacks on Iranian oil and gas infrastructure. The looming possibility of a global trade war. Up-and-down prices for WTI and Brent. Still, in the midst of all this doubt and instability, oil and gas producers continue to buy and sell major upstream assets in the U.S. — and gobble up entire companies — in ongoing efforts to grow their businesses, reshape their po...

The EPIC Crude Pipeline, which stretches from the prolific Permian Basin in West Texas to Corpus Christi, has operated above its original nameplate capacity for more than a year, with volumes rising in recent months. Owner EPIC Midstream in April sold its NGL pipeline to Phillips 66 for $2.2 billion and its Olefins Pipeline to Howard Energy Partners in December 2024. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll dis...

U.S. fuel supplier Sunoco announced in May that it has inked a US$9.1-billion agreement to buy Canada-based Parkland Corp., a move that would create the Americas’ largest independent fuel distributor. Sunoco would gain control of Parkland’s fleet of fueling stations and its valuable Burnaby refinery near Vancouver, BC. The deal is supported by Parkland’s largest shareholder and is slated to be vot...

The pace of multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the upstream sector may have eased a bit after a frenetic couple of years, but M&A among E&Ps is still happening. And, just as important, producers just coming off big deals are divesting assets that don’t fit their strategies, or reaching agreements to buy “bolt-on” acreage and production in key basins. There’s a lot of M&A “fun, fun, fu...

The European Union (EU) has had to rethink and reconfigure major elements of its policies around natural gas since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Prior to the war, Russian volumes accounted for 45% of the EU’s imports of natural gas, nearly double the supply from second-place Norway, but Russian gas supplies have dropped considerably since then, impacting the global LNG market. In...

The 35-year dream of widening the Corpus Christi Ship Channel and deepening it to 54 feet from the old 47 feet is at long last a reality. The $625 million project also has spurred marine-terminal owners in Corpus Christi and Ingleside to undertake — or at least consider — major dock and dredging projects that would enable them to make full use of the deeper 30-mile channel. In today’s RBN blog, we...

Buoyed in part by early optimism about the Trump administration’s potentially positive impact on the economy and the oil and gas industry, the WTI spot oil price reached a five-month high of nearly $76/bbl in January. But the optimism and oil prices have steadily eroded due to the impact of tariffs, trade wars and stubborn oilfield service inflation. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the impact o...

It looks like the U.S. ethane market may have just dodged a bullet. Since late May, the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security effectively banned ethane exports to China, the destination for two-thirds of the ethane sent out of Gulf Coast docks — about 225 Mb/d in 2024. Ethane has become a bargaining chip in U.S.-China negotiations over rare earths and tariffs, in part because China has no alternati...

Marcellus/Utica natural gas production grew by leaps and bounds in the 2010s, but the pace of growth has slowed dramatically in recent years, mostly due to takeaway constraints. Finally, the prospects for renewed growth are improving. New pipeline capacity out of Appalachia is coming online — especially to the booming Southeast, and maybe the Gulf Coast too. New LNG export capacity is about to be...

There’s been a surge in E&P interest in the Utica Shale’s volatile oil window the past couple of years, and EOG Resources has been particularly optimistic about its potential for producing large volumes of condensate, the lightest of superlight crude oils. A few days ago, EOG — known for growing its business organically, not via M&A — announced one of the largest acquisitions of the year s...

It seems almost nothing is going to stop Western Canada’s crude oil production growth. But getting those incremental barrels to refiners and exporters will require more pipeline takeaway capacity, including expansions to Enbridge’s Mainline and Express systems, which should keep barrels flowing to key markets in the U.S. and avoid a capacity crunch. In today’s RBN blog, we consider how our outlook...

The U.S. outlook for low-carbon hydrogen was bright and sunny just a year or two ago, with billions in federal funding and policy support, but to no one’s surprise, things have darkened considerably this year. Several clean-energy initiatives have faced resistance from Republicans in Washington, with the budget reconciliation bill currently making its way through Congress on track to produce the m...

Exports of Venezuelan crude to the U.S. have moved lower in recent months, a trend that seems likely to continue with the May 27 expiration of Chevron’s permit to operate there. But while a limited extension of that permit appears likely, if not yet official, the development adds new challenges for Gulf Coast refiners that process heavy crude. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll update the situation in Ven...

Midstream developers have complained for decades that federal courts reviewing agency approvals for their infrastructure projects have cast too wide a net — that is, instead of requiring agencies to simply analyze the specific environmental impacts of the project in question, the courts have been insisting regulators also examine the effects of the upstream and downstream activities the project wo...

After dodging the huge tariffs on exports of U.S. LPG and ethane to China — at least until August 12 — a new wrinkle has emerged. Enterprise Products Partners said in a filing May 29 that the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has flagged its exports of butane and ethane to China as a security risk; specifically, that they pose an “unacceptable risk of use in or diversion to a military end...

We’ve discussed the qualities of the Uinta Basin’s unusual waxy crude, the challenges inherent in moving it to market, and the use of machine-learning AI to optimize its extraction from two key geologic layers or “benches” deep below the rugged hills of northeastern Utah. Now, in today’s RBN blog, it’s finally time to reveal what all this tells us regarding the prospects for continued Uinta produc...