Locator: 50123B.
Blackout: Tehran's longest blackout has now stretched to 100 hours. [4.2 days -- that's about how long the war has gone on so far.]
Ecuador:
- NYT: link here.
Focus on dividends:
- SRE: raised dividend; I believe that was previously posted:
- CSX: huge raise in quarterly dividend; 20%? I need to re-check.
Is it just me or does it seem we're near a tipping point here? In a good way.
Trump's opposition, on almost any subject:
- really ignorant (memo to self: look up difference between "ignorant" and "stupid"), or simply,
- really political?
- the tipping point for me -- when someone suggested "the US is no longer the #1 world power.
- he (and, yes, it was a he) obviously has no clue;
- the second tipping point for me -- the NYT obituary, Ali Khamenie
- the avuncular leader with a warm smile
- I'll have to go back and see the NYT obituary on a guy named Adolf
- one wonders if Trump's political adversaries would accept Cuba with nuclear arsenal; ballistic missiles, drones, and a Cuban navy? That's what Israel was obviously facing, and now we see that Iran is willing to take on the entire Mideast; imagine taking on nuclear-armed Iran?
Operation EPIC FURY: tracked here.
Tehran: Achilles heel -- water -- chatbot -- Tehran water crisis.
- this will likely be humanitarian crisis
- very possible military operation will turn into humanitarian crisis
Markets:
- oil: ho-hum
- does anyone in the US really get the feeling oil is a big issue?
- natural gas: this is the real issue
- US equity market: ho-hum
- Broadcom: to report earnings today
- stand-alone post pending
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Back to the Bakken
Remember all that concern about the aging shale fields becoming more gassy? See RBN Energy below.
WTI: flat overnight.
New wells reporting:
- Thursday, March 5, 2026: 7 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 113 for the year,
- None.
- Wednesday, March 4, 2026: 7 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 113 for the year,
- 41601, conf, BR, Sivertson 6D,
- 41373, conf, Hess, EN-Hanson A-LW-155-94-0618H-1,
RBN Energy: short-term priorities emerge as global demand for natural gas heats up. Link here. Archived.
The world is hungry for more natural gas. The newly reintroduced Current Policies Scenario from the International Energy Agency (IEA) sees global demand rising from today’s 400 Bcf/d to about 475 Bcf/d by 2050, roughly in line with other notable forecasts from the likes of BP and ExxonMobil.
[75 Bcf/d divided by 20 years = less than 4 Bcf/day increase. That seems incredibly low, considering the "fourth industrial revolution.]
OPEC is even more bullish, predicting demand will reach 540 Bcf/d by midcentury. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of natural gas. So, where will it come from and what are the biggest issues facing the market? Those are among the major questions addressed at RBN’s recent GasCon 2026 conference and the focus of today’s RBN blog.
Warning: Today’s blog includes some blatant plugs for a newly available replay of our event in Houston.
As we did at the conference, let’s start with a little background about where things stand today.
Global natural gas production in 2024 was a little more than 400 Bcf/d, with the U.S. (green layer in left graph in Figure 1 below) accounting for about 110 Bcf/d, or more than one-quarter of total supplies. Canada’s 20 Bcf/d (red layer) put total North American production at about 130 Bcf/d.
After the U.S., Russia (pink layer) is the next-biggest producer, with the rest supplied by Australia (yellow layer), Qatar (light-orange layer), and several other smaller producers within Other OCED (light-purple layer), Other OPEC (dark-orange layer) and others (blue layer).
But these numbers don’t tell the whole story because some countries — notably the U.S., Russia, Qatar and Australia — produce substantially more gas than they consume. In 2024, U.S. demand for natural gas was 91 Bcf/d (orange bar section at left side of right graph), leaving 13 Bcf/d available for export (blue bar section), primarily as LNG.
