Locator: 50670B.
Weekly unemployment figures: incredibly good. Trump won't get any mention. Expected: 213,000. Actual: 189,000. But the real story is how few -- in the big scheme of things -- actually file for unemployment (first time filing) -- with all the negative stories coming out of The NYT and Washington, DC.
LDC power: an excerpt from yesterday's RBN Energy blog -- link here, paywall; link here, blog; link here, archived; link here, Monarch; link here, Colossus.
Sites that opt for
gas-fired generation have several paths they can pursue. Combined-cycle
turbines can be the most efficient fit, especially at facilities that
require high levels of steady power generation, but they can take years
to secure thanks to high demand and well-understood supply-chain issues.
Single-cycle turbines appear to be the most popular short-term fix,
while reciprocating engines can be easier to obtain and deploy, while
also being purpose-built for AI workloads. They are a major part of
Nscale’s strategy for the Monarch campus noted above. A combination of
solutions may be the best path forward at some sites. Truck-mounted gas
turbines from VoltaGrid and reciprocating engines were
deployed by xAI to get its 100,000-GPU Colossus facility in Memphis,
TN, up and running in just four months.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $104.60.
New wells reporting:
- Friday, May 1, 2026: 6 for the month, 106 for the quarter, 263 for the year,
- 42204, conf, Silver Hill Energy, Texas E 158-92-8-20-3MBHX,
- 42104, conf, Hunt Oil, Meyer 155-90-31-30H-3,
- 42103, conf, Hunt Oil, Burke 155-90-36-25H-2,
- 41644, conf, Hess, EN-Rohde-157-94-3625H-3,
- 41613, conf, BR, Sivertson 6H,
- 40960, conf, Hess, EN-Rohde-157-94-3625H-2,
- Thursday, April 30, 2026: 100 for the month, 100 for the quarter, 257 for the year,
RBN Energy: US and European refineries thriving so far, but Asian ones suffer. Link here.
It’s
been eight weeks since the steady flow of crude oil and refined product
tankers out of the Persian Gulf ended, and the impacts of the
still-simmering U.S.-Iran conflict on refineries and product suppliers
in the U.S., Europe and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are becoming
clearer. For many refineries on both sides of the Atlantic, their
relatively minor reliance on Middle East crude and the higher prices
they are now receiving for their gasoline, diesel and (especially) jet
fuel put them in a great spot, at least for now. It’s much different for
refineries in many Asian countries, however. Heavily dependent on
Persian Gulf oil, they are drawing down their reserves, scrambling for
replacements, and hoping the Strait of Hormuz is reliably reopened very
soon. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the current state of refining and
refined product supply in the U.S., Europe and APAC.
We
should emphasize up front that you can’t make broad generalizations
about all U.S. refineries or all refineries in Europe or Asia. Sure,
they can be put into categories or groups — for example, complex
refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) or “teapots” in China — but
each refinery is ultimately unique, with its own location, set of
refining/processing equipment, crude slate, and approach to feedstock
contracting and refined product sales, among other things. That said,
many refineries in each of the three areas we’re focusing on (the U.S.,
Europe and Asia) are facing similar situations a couple of months into
the Iran conflict. As for refined product supply, the U.S. is just fine
for the foreseeable future, but Europe and Asia already are struggling
and things could get far worse in the coming weeks.
We’ll
start with the U.S., whose refineries have been relying less and less
on Persian Gulf crude oil in recent years. As we discussed a couple of
weeks ago in How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,
total oil imports from the region averaged only 491 Mb/d in 2025, down
from a peak of more than 2.6 MMb/d in 2001 and the lowest level since
1985. PADD 3 (Gulf Coast; middle chart in Figure 1 below), the only U.S.
region to export vast amounts of refined products, imported only 176
Mb/d of Persian Gulf crude last year, less than half of what it did in
2020. That mostly heavier, higher-sulfur oil is readily replaceable by a
mix of light shale oil, medium crude from the offshore U.S. Gulf, and
heavy oil from Canada or Venezuela.
Of note, more than two-thirds of the PADD 3 imports in Q4 2025 were
Saudi imports going to Aramco’s wholly-owned Motiva refinery in Port
Arthur, TX.
