WTI In A Narrow Trading Range; Direction Not Seen; Active Rigs At 63 In North Dakota -- June 12, 2018; The Big Story Of The Day -- Fractionation And Mont Belvieu -- RBN Energy

Updates

Later, 8:10 a.m.: I just listened to Stuart Varney over on Fox News. Color me impressed. Trump and Kim accomplished quite a bit considering where they came from; their first meeting; how long they met; etc. Some big things came out of that short meeting.

Original Post

My 2 cents: early morning Fox News  vs CNBC. Huge difference in reporting. During the 6:00 a.m. CDT hour, CNBC round-table on the Korean summit focused on the Fed and whether there will be four rate increases. Meanwhile, Fox News had substantive reporting on the Korean summit. Pretty amazing, the difference. I was underwhelmed by CNBC; amazed how incredibly shallow their round table was. Overall, it appeared news outlets were looking for something on which to report (disclaimer: I only spent a few minutes on CNBC, and about 20 minutes on Fox News). So far, no "nothing-burger" comment from anti-Trumpers but I expect that to happen before the day is over. This is a lot like the Kardashians: being famous for being famous. The summit: newsworthy for being newsworthy. Bottom line: this is a make or break moment for North Korea.

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Active rigs:

$65.92↓	6/12/2018	06/12/2017	06/12/2016	06/12/2015	06/12/2014
Active Rigs	63	53	28	76	185

RBN Energy: soaring NGL supplies may soon overwhelm Mont Belvieu fractionation capaacity.

The NGL sector is firing on all cylinders.

Natural gas liquids production in the Permian, the SCOOP/STACK and other key basins is up, up, up.

A number of new, ethane-consuming steam crackers are coming online along the Texas and Louisiana coast, most conveniently close to the NGL storage and fractionation hub in Mont Belvieu, TX.

The export market for liquefied petroleum gases — propane and normal butane — is through the roof, averaging more than 1 MMb/d in the first five months of 2018 (almost all of it being shipped out of Gulf Coast ports), and ethane exports are strong, too.

What’s not to like?

Well, NGLs don’t do anyone much good until they are fractionated into “purity products” like ethane, propane, normal butane etc., and the rapid run-up in U.S. NGL production — combined with the reluctance of producers to commit to new fractionation capacity — has the existing fractionation plants in Mont Belvieu running flat-out to keep up. Today, we begin a review of the NGL Capital of the Western World and considers why Mont Belvieu — as big as it is — is getting bigger.

Comment: this is a huge story; will archive.