RBN Energy Blogcast

This may be the best time ever to be a manufacturer of natural gas turbines. The U.S. seems poised for a sharp increase in power demand in the coming years and order books are filling up, but it’s not all smooth sailing and significant headwinds remain. In today’s RBN blog, we will explore how rising costs, supply-chain constraints, long lead times and tariffs could impact turbine manufacturing an...

With more than 9 billion gallons of propane delivered to U.S. customers each year, moving those volumes to their final destination is a complex task involving pipelines, rail cars, storage (be it underground or above ground) and, ultimately, trucks. Several major factors help determine the quantity and price of propane delivered to end-use customers, including the seasonality of demand versus...

Over the past month, E&P executives have addressed shareholder and analyst concerns amid the murkiest market conditions since the onset of the pandemic in Q1 2020. One industry leader pointed out that on an inflation-adjusted basis, there have only been two quarters since 2004 when front-month oil prices have been as low as they are today (excluding 2020). In today’s RBN blog, we review what w...

It has been 12 months since the Trans Mountain Expansion Project — aka TMX — finally began operations after years of delay, creating a much-needed, larger conduit to move Western Canada’s rising crude oil production to the Pacific Northwest and overseas markets. Although the customer base for exports remains limited, the Trans Mountain pipeline system has been responsible for opening up entirely n...

It’s been about a year and a half since Next Wave Energy Partners opened its Project Traveler facility, a milestone in the energy industry. Overall, Project Traveler has exceeded production expectations and proven the innovative approach of combining ethylene and isobutane to produce high-quality alkylate. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at what’s been accomplished so far and dive into what’s ahea...

The pipelines carrying crude oil from the Permian Basin in West Texas to the Corpus Christi area have been as jammed as an urban highway on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The Gray Oak Pipeline, the largest from the Permian to Corpus, has just completed the 80-Mb/d first phase of a planned two-phase expansion that will add a total of 120 Mb/d of capacity. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss...

The Marcellus/Utica region is by far the most prolific natural gas production area in the U.S., accounting for about one-third of the nation’s daily output. The shale play experienced phenomenal growth in the 2010s, its gas production rising from less than 2 Bcf/d to more than 33 Bcf/d over that decade. But the pace of growth has slowed dramatically in recent years, mostly due to takeaway constrai...

There is tremendous buzz around natural-gas-fired turbines right now with backlogs reportedly stretching five years into the future due to supply-chain bottlenecks, labor shortages and a surge in demand. The power generation industry is poised for a major upswing as data center development and overall electricity demand continue to accelerate, driving an even greater need for gas turbines. In toda...

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 s...

Familiar corporate names like Cummins, Freightliner and Waste Management have joined forces with dozens of less-familiar public companies and startups to form what some might call a new U.S. industry. Thousands of commercial trucks powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) are on the roads nationwide, many of them filling up at dedicated fueling stations offering a compressed form of renewable natur...

Hydrogen has a well-established, if limited, role in the modern economy. It has been used in refining and ammonia production for decades, but its potential has long been touted in various areas, including decarbonizing hard-to-abate industrial processes such as steelmaking, as well as in larger roles in heavy-duty transportation and energy storage. The last few years have seen a significant push t...

The Permian’s Midland and Delaware basins have seen their share of midstream success stories the past few years — many of them privately backed efforts to gain a foothold and then expand into the big time. Navitas Midstream Partners (later sold to Enterprise Products Partners) comes to mind; so do Oryx Midstream and Brazos Midstream. Now comes Vaquero Midstream — vaquero, of course, being Spanish...

Serious concerns about higher costs and lower demand have left the E&P sector in a delicate position since the implementation of new U.S. tariffs, as evidenced by the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank’s recent survey of producers, who appear especially vulnerable after massive acquisition spending in 2024 to deepen and high-grade their portfolios. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore the impact of the...

Much like a cowboy venturing into uncharted territory, E&Ps are roaming Northeast Texas and the far-western sections of the Haynesville Shale in search of more natural gas. It’s a challenging adventure, and while there’s a lot of hope and hype, the recent history of developments outside the Haynesville’s main producing areas shows that success is far from guaranteed. In today’s RBN blog, the s...

The Trump administration’s approach to economic policy — including tariff threats to longtime allies backed by sometimes shifting policy goals — might be a sound tactical move in the long run by keeping negotiators on edge and extracting better deals. But that approach has also heightened the sense of uncertainty about where things are headed, affecting investment and long-term planning. In today’...

Several large, publicly held midstream companies play critical roles in transporting crude oil, natural gas and NGLs from the Permian Basin to markets along the Gulf Coast, and all of them are investing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to expand their Permian-to-Gulf infrastructure. But there’s a privately held outlier among them — WhiteWater Midstream, which has developed key gas...

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...

The U.S. propane market may appear seamless at times, but a lot is happening just below the surface to determine consumer pricing. Key factors include the high seasonality of demand, supply contracts that must account for the seasonality of product delivery and the price, and the cost of transportation from terminals to bulk plants to end users. In today’s RBN blog, we will review the final delive...

Woodside Energy’s final investment decision (FID) on the $17.5 billion Louisiana LNG terminal was a stunner. For one thing, only 1 million metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of the project’s 16.5 MMtpa (2.2 Bcf/d) of capacity is under contract — U.S. LNG export projects typically have commitments for two-thirds or more of their output before pulling the trigger. The project will also have an outsized i...

The tide is shifting in the energy sector back toward hydrocarbons as renewables face new, big hurdles. The latest tangible sign of this shift is BP’s decision to refocus on traditional oil and gas and deemphasize renewables, which follows ExxonMobil’s and Shell’s restructuring of strategies in the same direction. The likelihood that hydrocarbon demand will continue to grow throughout this decade...

The Trump administration is trying to breathe new life into the long-dormant Alaska LNG project, talking up its strengths and encouraging potential Asian customers and investors to consider it. But the project, a multibillion-dollar plan to pipe natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to Anchorage and Cook Inlet for liquefaction and export, faces huge financial and administrative hurdles, plus the c...

The U.S. government recently released the final rules for the Section 301 fees proposed earlier this year, intended to address the dominance of China’s shipbuilding industry. According to the new rules, exports on Chinese-owned, -operated or -built vessels are mostly excluded — great news for U.S. energy producers and exporters, especially in the NGL sector. In addition, things are starting to cha...

Rising demand for electricity to serve data centers, manufacturing and other power-consuming sectors of the economy is spurring the development of scores of gas-fired plants — up to 100 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity by 2040. How much power those new plants will actually generate — and, with that, how much natural gas they will require — remain open questions, however. A recent study indicates tha...

Over the past 15 years, the U.S.’s crude oil supply/demand balance has been transformed by the Shale Revolution. Increasing production unlocked through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have pushed up the nation’s overall supply without an equal change in refining capacity, resulting in significant changes in regional balances. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss what PADD-by-PADD crude oil...

Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Meta have long sought to meet their data-center power needs while at least limiting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But while many developers and utilities have turned to natural gas to power data centers because of its ability to provide reliable 24/7 power, renewable generation continues to play a role, especially if it includes plans to utilize on-si...