Launch a company built around energy market fundamentals and rock & roll song titles. Make the analysis practical and commercially useful. Keep the quality high. Then … give it away for free. Not exactly a textbook business plan. But that's more or less how RBN Energy got started nearly 15 years ago — and it's worked out pretty well. Today we turn the page on a new chapter of the saga. Novi Labs has acquired RBN Energy. We are very excited about this combination. Today's RBN blog is all about the logic of this deal and what it means for our customers.
Back in 2012 when we started RBN Energy, the goal was simple: provide practical energy market intelligence that helps energy professionals navigate increasingly complex market conditions. Our mission has been to make sense out of opaque and rapidly changing energy markets to help our clients develop a deep understanding — and to do it in style.
Over time, that work expanded across commodities: natural gas, NGLs, crude oil, refined products, and throughout the value chain — from the wellhead to gathering and processing, through storage, long-haul pipelines, refineries, end-use markets, and sometimes all the way to the export dock. As our coverage evolved, customers increasingly relied on RBN to connect the dots between commodity fundamentals, infrastructure constraints, and pricing dynamics across North American energy markets.
Today’s announcement is about taking that mission to the next level, by hooking up with Novi Labs. Founded in 2015, Novi is best known for its upstream oil & gas data and analytics platform, helping operators, analysts and investors make faster, higher-confidence decisions. The company was built on a simple premise: The industry was making billion-dollar capital decisions on incomplete, error-prone public data and legacy workflows. Novi changed that. Today, the company powers the full data-to-decision workflow across budget and planning, development optimization, and acquisition and divestiture. They do it through a suite of integrated products spanning data, forecasting, analytics, and AI, giving customers the ability to evaluate individual wells across multiple scenarios, validate production claims, and identify acquisition opportunities before competitors do.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Satellite-To-SmartPhone Connectivity -- May 26, 2026
Big story for all involved.
Four competitors as it stands now:
- Globalstar, NASDAQ GSAT, $84 / share
- Apple's native iPhone satellite connectivity (like Emergency SOS and satellite messaging) is provided by Globalstar. Apple uses Globalstar's satellite network and ground stations, and has heavily invested in the company to expand its infrastructure and launch new satellites
- Starlink, private, wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX
- recent news: American Airlines -- exclusive deal to use Starlink for commercial a/c wifi
- AST Space Mobile, NASDAQ ASTS, $130 / share -- on a tear; primarily uses SpaceX, Blue Origin and ISRO (India) to launch satellites
- Amazon Leo:
- to acquire Globalstar in $12 billion deal; will take awhile to close; requires regulator approval.
- see how social media feels about this, link here.
Query:
Right now it looks like there are four satellite-to-phone operators: Globalstar; Starlink Mobile, Amazon LEO and AST SpaceMobile. Now, Amazon LEO is going to buy Globalstar?
Reply:
Apple: owns 20% of Globalstar. Will sell its stake to Amazon if deal goes through. Nothing (supposedly) changes with regard to what end-user sees. Links everywhere. Helps account for recent Apple / AAPL activity.
- the rich get richer
- "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- "Yes, they have money." Ernest Hemingway.
The Bakken -- Thursday, May 28, 2026
WTI: oil is dead money now that the strait is opened. Oh, never mind.
Heat: UK, EU, and India.
Ukraine: as bad as ever, no end in sight.
Mideast: back to square one.
Canada: lots of talk.
Venezuela: lots of oil -- the kind Gulf Coast refiners like -- heavy, high sulfur, low quality -- flowing into US from Venezuela. This is the oil that would have come from Canada via the Keystone XL.
Rare earth metals, magnets: US company scores huge contract with Greenland.
Ferrari: the Pope weighs in on the $640,000 Luce. Ferrari's first five-seater -- great for a man with a family.
- "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- "Yes, they have money." Ernest Hemingway.
Speaking of the pope: some suggest there's evidence that the pope used AI to help write his encyclical to "disarm" AI.
Spelling: it is true that chatbots are generally wrong when it comes to "counting" letters in words. It has to do with how the query is made, and the way chatbots work. If you're using chatbots to count letters in a word, you're ......
NPR: the numbers have never made sense. Link here. Federal subsidies accounted for 1% of NPR's budget? One percent and all this angst? They have had to let go 4% of their content staff?
CIA: exactly how did this guy get a super-secret security clearance? Link here. Hegseth is the least of our problems.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $90.58. Later: $91.15. Moving up sharply but will probably close around $91. Hope springs eternal.
New wells reporting:
- Friday, May 29, 2026: 55 for the month, 155 for the quarter, 312 for the year,
- None.
- Thursday, May 28, 2026: 55 for the month, 155 for the quarter, 312 for the year,
- 41859, conf, Devon Energy, Finn 13-25F 1H,
- 41031, conf, Hess, BW-Wilson-149-99-3625H-2,
RBN Energy: RBN Energy now part of Novi Labs. Link here.
Figure 1. A Marriage Made in Heaven. Source: RBN
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Twenty-Six (26) Wells On One 1280-Acre Unit -- NDIC Hearing Dockets -- June, 2026 -- May 27, 2026
Locator: 50866B.
Flashback: I remember when I first started the blog, I said that "if. you have one well, you may have 24 wells some day." In the old days, operators said they wouldn't consider drilling a well unless it had a million-bbl EUR. I'm sure that's still the case.
NDIC hearing dockets, June, 2026:
Case 32934, Hess, Elm Tree-Bakken, 13 wells on a 1280-acre unit; McKenzie County;
Thirteen wells currently. Now, 13 more wells --
The maps:
Three New Permits; Four Permits Renewed; Five Permits Canceled -- May 27, 2026
Locator: 50865B.
Germany electricity:
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $89.66.
Active rigs: 27.
Three new permits, #42975 - #31977, inclusive:
- Operators: Hess (2); Devon Energy
- Fields: Ray (Willams County); Buford (Williams)
- Comments:
- Devon Energy has a permit for a Buford well, lot 2, section 3-152-104;
- to be sited 330 FNL and 1735 FEL;
- Hess has permits for two GO-Wolla wells, lot 1, section 6-156-97,
- to be sited 455 FNL and 847 / 880 FEL.
Four permits renewed:
- Formentera Operations (2): FLX3 and PTL4, Burke County; Portal oil field; and,
- Silver Hill Energy (2): Orris and Delores, Burke County; Gros Ventre oil field.
Five permits canceled:
- Devon Energy: one A Tufto permit, Williams County; and, four Albert South permits, McKenzie County.