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Calendar: without question, the best day of the week for Christmas Eve, New Year's Ev -- Wednesday. What a great week.
Recommendation: when Christmas Day falls on a Thursday, not ready for prime-time:
- Wednesday, Christmas Eve:
- market closes at 1:00 p.m.;
- except for mission essential, Federal employees released from work early (by noon).
- postal employees full day but given compensatory time off on Friday
- Thursday, Christmas Day: Federal holiday, of course
- Friday:
- market closes at 1:00 p.m.;
- only mission essential Federal employees come in work, but not a Federal holiday
- no routine postal delivery; priority packages continue to be delivered
- similar schedules for days when Christmas falls on any other day of the week, but obviously adjusted for weekends.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $57.66.
New wells reporting:
- Sunday, December 28, 2025: 68 for the month, 191 for the quarter, 774 for the year,
- 41553, conf, XTO Energy, HBU Baptiste Federal 34X-11C,
- 40958, conf, Devon Energy, Grand National 34-36F 5H,
- 40765, conf, Enerplus, Olson 147-97-34-27-7H,
- Saturday, December 27, 2025: 65 for the month, 188 for the quarter, 771 for the year,
- 41554, conf, XTO Energy, HBU Baptiste Federal 34X-11H,
- 40784, conf, Enerplus Olson 147-97-34-27-9H-ELL,
- 40769, conf, Enerplus, Olson 147-97-34-27-8H,
- 40723, conf, Devon Energy, Costanza 24-13 5TFH,
- Friday, December 26, 2025: 61 for the month, 184 for the quarter, 767 for the year,
- 41281, conf, Hess, BB-Rice-150-95-0718H-6,
RBN Energy: why the return of the IEA's current policies scenario matters. Link here. Archived.
The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2025 (WEO 2025) represents a big shift in how the agency is framing the future of global energy. After several editions that leaned hard into an accelerated energy transition, the IEA has brought back its Current Policies Scenario (CPS), a baseline view built solely on policies that are on the books today — not those announced, proposed or aspirational. For folks watching global crude markets, especially in the U.S. oil and gas patch, that is a lot more than just a structural tweak to the outlook. It’s a clear signal that the IEA sees a growing disconnect between its earlier assumptions and how energy demand is really playing out. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll dig into what’s changed and why it matters.
As shown in Figure 1 below, the IEA’s outlook has, in recent years, anchored its long-term oil demand projections around two main scenarios: Net Zero Emissions (NZE; green line) and Stated Policies (aka STEPS; orange line). The NZE envisions an aggressive energy transition pathway, with global oil demand falling steeply to around 25 MMb/d by 2050. STEPS assumes partial implementation of announced government policies, with demand peaking near 100 MMb/d in the early 2030s before gradually declining. These two scenarios, with their widening divergence, have framed much of the global energy transition debate but have increasingly failed to reflect actual consumption trends.
