Locator: 48962B.
Playing chess: if the Federal Reserve fails to fire Lisa Cook, would this be grounds for Trump to fire JPow? JPow says he doesn't have the power to fire Lisa Cook. That may be true, but he certainly has the power to affect her pay, her access to the building. The Federal Reserve does not provide legal services for private matters involving the governors. Needs to be fact-checked.
GDPNow: next estimate later today, August 26, 2025.
Deep dive overnight:
- Intel: it's not over yet. Do not count Intel out. MOJO, FOMO vs reality.
- US-India relations sour: that's the meme -- don't believe it. Link here.
- Department of War. Odds of happening? 10% at best.
- Kevin Hassett. Wiki.
Electricity, New Jersey: op-ed, WSJ. Link here.
Despite flat electricity demand for the past two decades—and some of the
lowest energy usage per capita among the 50 states—New Jersey residents
pay some of the highest retail power prices in the country.
As of April
2025, the Garden State ranked No. 12 in the nation, with prices more
than 15% above the U.S. average. This gap has widened further in the
wake of the recent decision by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities
to approve an additional 17% to 20% rate increase for most utility
customers starting in June. This is absolutely incorrect based on EIA data.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $63.66. Oh-oh. Down almost 2%.
New wells:
- Wednesday, August 27, 2025: 53 for the month, 91 for the quarter, 531for the year,
- 40706, conf, Oasis, Lake Trenton Federal 5302 21-31 5B,
- 40730, conf, Oasis, Nordby 5793 13-12 3B,
- Tuesday, August 26, 2025: 51 for the month, 89 for the quarter, 529 for the year,
- 41640, conf, Neptune Operating, Foster 4-9-16 4H,
- 40948, conf, Hess, TI-H. Bakken-LN-157-94-0712H-1,
RBN Energy: Energy Transfer to take Permian gas west on transwestern expansion -- the Desert Southwest Project. Archived.
Midstreamers developing natural gas takeaway capacity out of the Permian
have understandably focused on pipelines to the Gulf Coast — and along
the coast to LNG export terminals and other big gas consumers.
But don’t
forget the Desert Southwest, where demand for gas-fired power is
soaring.
Energy Transfer recently committed to building a 516-mile,
1.5-Bcf/d expansion to its Transwestern Pipeline system from West Texas
to the Phoenix area, and hinted that it might double the project’s
capacity due to the high level of interest.
In today’s RBN blog, we
discuss Energy Transfer’s aptly named Desert Southwest Project, what
drove its quick progress to a final investment decision (FID), and what
other westbound projects out of the Permian might still happen.
RBN’s Arrow Model
shows seven gas-pipeline corridors out of the Permian, four of them
toward the Gulf Coast and the others to the Midcontinent, Central Mexico
and the West.
Of the roughly 19.3 Bcf/d of gas flowing out of the
Permian this month, 67% (12.9 Bcf/d) is heading east toward the Gulf;
only 13% (2.6 Bcf/d) is headed west toward Arizona and California.
The
vast majority of those westbound flows are on two pipeline systems:
Energy Transfer’s Transwestern system (dark-blue lines in Figure 1
below), whose mainline takes a more northerly route through New Mexico
and Arizona, and Kinder Morgan’s El Paso Natural Gas system (EPNG;
light-purple lines), which has both northern and southern mainlines and
more spurs and alternate pathways than you can shake a stick at.
Both
systems also pick up gas volumes from the San Juan Basin
in northwestern New Mexico. Both systems also feed gas into other
pipeline systems in Southern California, and EPNG feeds gas into
pipelines in northwestern Mexico.
Figure 1. Major Gas Pipelines in the Desert Southwest and California. Source: RBN
Historically, both pipelines were driven by the very large loads in
California, to the point that, at least on EPNG, the Desert Southwest
shippers were simply known as “East of California.” The Transwestern and
EPNG systems have each undergone a number of expansions over the past
quarter-century, mostly — as you might expect — to help accommodate
rising gas demand in fast-growing Arizona and Mexico and, to lesser
degrees, New Mexico and California. But as we’ll get to next, those
expansions — a couple of MMcf/d here and there — are nothing compared to
what Energy Transfer and Kinder Morgan have each been pursuing the past
couple of years, and what Energy Transfer recently committed to
building.
