Happy Monday -- CVX To Buy Hess -- Over The Weekend, Six Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- October 23, 2023

Locator: 45800B. 

NEWS

Tesla: link here. DOJ seeks documents on driving range (but look at the URL).

The company's spending is, however, expected to return to the $7 billion and $9 billion range in the next two years, a regulatory filing showed.

Tesla was hesitating on its plans for a factory in Mexico as it grapples with a turbulent economic outlook, CEO Elon Musk said in an earnings call earlier this month.

Saudi perspective: Saudi Arabia's Mideast dream in tatters.  Bloomberg. Hamas atrocities in Israel.

Apple: to lose everything it has on mainland China — Peter Zeihan. Link here.

Liz: Link here. Merry Christmas.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $87.02. It appears the US has settled things down in the Mideast. Business back to normal.

Tuesday, October 24, 2023: 59 for the month; 59 for the quarter, 629 for the year
39678, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Getzlaf 3-25-36-158N-101W-MBH, Little Muddy,
38092, conf, Enerplus, Baleen 148-93-05A-06H, McGregory Buttes,
37449, conf, Hess, EN-Abrahamson-LE-155-93-3019H-1, 
34221, conf, BR, Abercrombie 3-8-12 MBH, Elidah,

Monday, October 23, 2023: 55 for the month; 55 for the quarter, 625 for the year
39845, conf, Kraken, Wiseman 31-36-35-34 5H, Hebron,
39679, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Getzlaf 2-25-36-158N-101W-MBH,
39635, conf, SWD, Dakota Fluid Solutions

Sunday, October 22, 2023: 52 for the month; 52 for the quarter, 622 for the year
39680, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Farthing 5-30-31-158N-100W-MBH-LLW,
38276, conf, Hess, BB-Olson-150-95-009H-2, Blue Buttes,

Saturday, October 21, 2023: 50 for the month; 50 for the quarter, 620 for the year
39681, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Clermont 5-19-18-158N-100W-MBH-LL,

RBN Energy: shifting natural gas and power market fundamentals driving storage values.

Storage has long been a critically important balancing mechanism in the Lower 48 natural gas market. Now, after languishing for much of the Shale Era, storage values are coming out of the doldrums. The key driver behind this change is that, unlike in the old days, when the storage market was driven primarily by the intrinsic value of capacity — i.e., the need to sock away gas in the lower-demand summer months for use in the peak winter months — the value of storage is being driven almost exclusively by extrinsic economics — i.e., how flexible and responsive capacity allows market participants to manage supply and demand during short-term market swings. This flexibility and responsiveness have become increasingly important criteria for ensuring reliability as LNG export facilities and an increasingly renewables-heavy power sector navigate frequent demand fluctuations day to day, or even intraday, as well as during high-stakes, extreme weather events like 2021’s Winter Storm Uri. In today’s RBN blog, we delve into the fundamental shifts influencing today’s storage market. 

In Part 1, we began with a history of the various phases of the Lower 48 storage market, including the gas storage heyday, when deregulation and a scarcity mindset led to a big build-out of storage capacity in the late 2000s and early 2010s. That gave way to a Dark Age for storage in the late 2010s when the near-perfection of shale drilling technology and an era of supply abundance left the market with too much storage capacity and depressed storage values. More recently, storage has been making a comeback, but as we concluded in the earlier blog, things are different this time around.