Thursday -- April 11, 2024

Locator: 46975B.

PPI came in lower than expected. Way down compared to previous month.

First time jobless claims also lower than expected.

WTI: $85.71.

Friday, April 12, 2024: 22 for the month; 22 for the quarter, 221 for the year
40136, conf, CRL, Veigel 3-9H1,

Thursday, April 11, 2024: 21 for the month; 21 for the quarter, 220 for the year
40232, conf, Empire ND, Wigeon 29-1 1H,
40135, conf, CLR, Veigel 2-9H,
38010, conf, BR, CCU Plymouth 31-29TFH,
36084, conf, Hess, BB-Federal A-LS-151-95-1615H9, 

RBN Energy: deepwater port license in hand, Enterprise's SPOT at front of export terminal race.

In the race to build the next deepwater crude oil export terminal along the U.S. Gulf Coast, there’s a lot of competition but one project now has a clear advantage: Enterprise Product Partners’ planned Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT), which has made the most progress in moving through the regulatory morass and announced that it had received its deepwater port license on April 9. In today’s RBN blog, we provide an update on SPOT’s progress and look at some of its inherent advantages, including a potentially shorter time to market and extensive pipeline connectivity.

RBN Energy: capital discipline resurrected E&Ps; could producers now backslide to "drill baby drill'?

Growth for growth’s sake. In the early years of the Shale Revolution, that’s what it was all about. Backed by billions of dollars in Wall Street borrowings, E&Ps plowed vast piles of cash into increasing production. It was the era of “Drill baby drill!” And we all know what happened next. Rabid production growth contributed to oversupply and crude oil prices crashed. But resilient E&Ps clawed their way back by adopting what we now know as capital discipline, initially in fits and starts. Then, after the COVID price meltdown, they went all-in, elevating free cash flow generation to Job #1 and returning a significant portion of cash flow to shareholders. It worked! Financial markets started to think of E&Ps more as yield vehicles than growth plays. But it is in the DNA of oil and gas producers to grow. And now that U.S. crude prices are above $85/bbl, could we see a backslide toward organic growth — a 2024 rendition of “Drill baby drill”? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore the historical context of E&Ps’ transition to capital discipline and what it tells us about what’s coming next. 

Let’s look at how we got to where we are today, focusing primarily on the oil market timeline. Way back before shale, the U.S. oil and gas industry had been struggling through a long period of stagnancy and decline. But in the late 2000s, the Shale Revolution changed everything. New, more effective techniques for optimizing the combo of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing enabled producers to wring increasing volumes of natural gas from previously impenetrable shale and, soon thereafter, the same approaches worked for crude oil. Talk about game-changers!