Locator: 50110B.
Mideast war: all of a sudden, it's getting serious
- must read WSJ assessment: "Gulf states in race against time to repel Iran's onslaught." Link here.
- bottom line: some suggest the gulf states will run out of air-defense interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles and drones
- at end of day won't change ultimate outcome of the war, but will likely result in huge number of civilian casualties if analysis proves to be correct
- QatarEnergy halts production of LNG at two sites; Iranians drone; takes one-fifth of global LNG export capacity offline in a single geopolitical event
Observation: if Iran can sustain this US-Israeli onslaught with relatively unsophisticated drones and ballistic missiles, imagine an Iran with nuclear ballistic missiles. Implications are immense.
Qatar:
- then we have an excellent article from Simon Watkins on the huge strategic shift to global LNG since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine;
- excellent article as always from Watkins; link here.
- Qatar is set to drive at least 40% of global LNG supply growth by 2029, expanding output from 77 mtpa to 142 mtpa.
- wow 77 to 142 --> an 84% increase in three years
Diego Garcia: it's much worse than we thought. The Brits will soon return the archipelago to Mauritius, and thus "control" to China. This could be stopped, but it's looking exceedingly less likely.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: up 8% overnight; up $5.54 overnight; trading at $76.77;
New wells reporting:
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,
Tuesday, March 3, 2026: 5 for the month, 111 for the quarter, 111 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: the expanding role of natural gas storage in east Texas and west Louisiana. Link here. Archived.
New and expanded natural gas storage facilities near the Texas/Louisiana border are coming online and being planned, mostly in response to the ongoing buildout of LNG export capacity along the Gulf Coast and new gas pipelines to those terminals. In today’s RBN blog — the second in a series — we continue our look at existing and planned storage capacity between the Haynesville and Western Haynesville gas production areas and the LNG export meccas along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu ship channels, as well as storage near the Katy, TX, gas hub.
As we said in Part 1, the infrastructure buildout along the border between the Lone Star and Bayou states is well underway. Planned liquefaction trains there with a combined capacity of 75 MMtpa (10 Bcf/d) have reached a final investment decision (FID), are under construction and will be starting up between now and 2031. These new LNG export facilities (blue-striped diamonds in Figure 1 below) will join three existing terminals (green diamonds) in the area — Sabine Pass LNG, Cameron LNG and Calcasieu Pass — that together have nearly 53 MMtpa (7 Bcf/d) of capacity. That means that within five years or so, terminals along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu waterways will receive as much as 17 Bcf/d of natural gas.
This massive demand center is fed by pipelines delivering gas from several production areas, including the Permian, the Eagle Ford and the far-away Marcellus/Utica. But as LNG export demand ramps up, increasing volumes will come from the relatively close-by Haynesville (light-gray-shaded area in Figure 1 below) and, in all likelihood, from the emerging Western Haynesville, which is centered in East Texas’s Freestone, Leon, Limestone and Robertson counties (outlined in red).
