WTI: $82 -- July 1, 2024

Locator: 48029B.

A reminder: Painted Woods Golf Course north of Bismarck, ND, now an 18-hole golf course.

Fastest growing state: North Dakota, again. Link here.

SCOTUS: rules for North Dakota business in Watford City, ND. Link here.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $82.05.

Tuesday, July 2, 2024: 3 for the month; 3 for the quarter, 339 for the year
40264, conf, Stephens Williston, Cabot 15591-0112-4H, 

Monday, July 1, 2024: 2 for the month; 2 for the quarter, 338 for the year
39895, conf, Hess, EN-Madisyn-LE-154-94-0705H-11,
39224, conf, Hess, BL-Herfindahl-156-95-3031H-3,

RBN Energy: the strange relationship between Mont Belvieu and Conway NGLS. Archived.

Mont Belvieu, TX and Conway, KS, are the two most significant U.S. hubs for NGL trading, storage and fractionation, with the much bigger Mont Belvieu hub primarily serving Gulf Coast and export demand, while the smaller Conway hub is focused on Midwest/Great Plains demand, especially for propane. The pricing dynamics between the two hubs are a key indicator of the supply/demand balance between the regions, but they don’t have the same kind of influence over the direction or magnitude of flows as price differential dynamics often do for other energy commodities. In today’s RBN blog, we will examine the gap between the price of the NGL “basket” in Mont Belvieu versus Conway and what that price spread tells us. 

We should begin with a brief reminder for readers who don’t live and breathe NGLs. The NGL market is in some ways a world of its own, with more quirks and idiosyncrasies than the crude oil and natural gas markets combined. NGLs are, of course, produced in significant volumes in most Lower 48 production areas, with notable exceptions such as the Haynesville and parts of the Marcellus where hydrocarbon output is largely limited to dry gas with little or no liquids. The associated gas emerging from wells with crude oil includes a combination of natural gas, mixed NGLs and impurities that are separated at gas processing plants into natural gas and mixed NGLs (aka Y-grade), each of which is then moved to downstream customers. Depending on the region and pricing relationships, some of the ethane within the associated gas is “rejected” into natural gas at the processing plant.