Featured Articles
| Monday May 11, 2020 | |
| The holiday festivities seem to be taking it on the chin as well during the virus crisis as Easter has come and gone and now Mother's Day brunch was left to the cooktop instead of the family heading out to mom's favorite eating establishment in the neighborhood. If you were in the Midwest and Northeast, it would have been tough to even think it was May 10th as the weather pattern dropped some extremely cold temperatures on both regions all weekend. Speaking of which, below is a weekend breakdown of some of the things that are perculating in the energy sector. The NYMEX session saw the prompt month up 2 cents to $1.84 but has now retreated ever so slightly. As mentioned above, it has been a cold weekend for the Midwest and Northeast. Temperatures across the regions fell into the 20's ... » read more | |
| Friday May 8, 2020 | |
| What the heck is going on with electricity demand and social distancing? The EIA has a piece on its web site showing MISO demand is down significantly from last year as a result of social distancing. Weekday demand in April was down 10% to 13%. These are huge numbers for electricity demand. EIA posits the shuttering of large industrial demand (think auto manufacturing) is driving demand lower (accidental pun, get it, "auto manufacturing" and "driving"). https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=43636#tab2 In April I saw a piece on residential demand that indicated that it was growing by leaps and bounds. In fact, residential demand is so strong that utilities are worried about bill shock for residential consumers. On April 14th, the Uplight Blog asserted that average ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 7, 2020 | |
| Who hasn't had a McDonalds breakfast sandwich at some point in their life as it is on many billboards and commercials over the years, heck it is even on their dollar menu or some sort of promotion where you can get two for $3.00. There was an article published that discussed the lost art of grabbing a hot breakfast on the way to work as work has now been established at home. In fact, if there is one meal that is easy to make in the kitchen without a lot of effort it is breakfast. The article goes on to say that establishements like the 'Golden Arches' get 20% of its throughput from breakfast customers with just over 40% of it's total revenue generated from such grab and go meals. Figure 1 | McDonald's Breakfast Menu These are staggering numbers for an established ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 6, 2020 | |
| As the Midwest and Eastern parts of the Lower 48 are experiencing colder than normal temperature conditions, the West is showing above normal daytime highs in Southern California and the Desert Southwest. Up in the Pacific Northwest, there is a combination of both worlds as the overnight temperatures are chilly enough to warrant a little heavier jacket on the morning dog walk only to shed it by the afternoon stroll through the neighborhood. I tell you all this because it takes us to that time of year when the Pacific Northwest goes through its typical hydro runoff period of the current Water Year. If you have followed our hydro views over the years, May is set up to start catching all the melting snow at the higher elevations as the system operators have been adhering to ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 5, 2020 | |
| Yesterday afternoon TETCO pipeline suffered its fifth rupture in the past four years. The incident occurred just south of the Owingsville compressor station in Central Kentucky. The 30 inch line that had been recovering from a previous rupture last August had been derated from 2.1 to 1.6 BCF. As of this morning the south bound flows from the Marcellus to the Gulf had gone to zero. Fortunately nobody was injured in this incident. TETCO is one of the oldest pipelines in North America having been built during World War II to avoid German submarine attacks on Northeast tanker deliveries. Although it goes through rigorous testing as part of the DOT safety standard it has been showing its age as of late. Figure 1 | Current South Bound TETCO Nominations from Marcellus to Gulf Since ... » read more | |
| Monday May 4, 2020 | |
| The time has come to where the human mind is getting restless as many individuals are protesting at City Hall or the capital to get the economy back on its feet. All this is going on during a time that researchers from all over the world are working endless hours to try and find a cure for the coronavirus. We still have doctors and nurses tending to individuals who are getting sick weeks later, food processing plants througout the Midwest are closed as outbreaks have been reported and stats still show new hot spots showing up in cities once thought to be immune. There are some positives that are showing up on the radar as our local grocery store is not mandating that anyone entering the store must be wearing a mask. This gives me more comfort shopping for the items ... » read more | |
| Friday May 1, 2020 | |
| The month of April is in the rearview mirror and what a month as we now understand what social distancing means, how bad one's internet service really is and how the phone network system when pushed to the test does not perform. When it comes to social distancing, the manner to which we deal with it is like anything else, we have to get used to it and then act accordingly. For example, early in the month we would go for a walk and as when anyone saw each other it was like parting the Red Sea with no eye contact. Everyone got out of the way and the speed to which they passed picked up to keep the space. Now, four weeks later, it is more cordial where there are three lanes on every street. The first two are your typical sidewalk where the third is the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 30, 2020 | |
| The commodity markets have always had volatility as that is the nature of the business given it is tied to weather, economic growth and technology advancements. For those of us who have been in the industry for decades, the movement is cyclical in a way that there is always something driving the oil and/or natural gas markets to the brink of no ceiling or a new floor that has never been seen before. You can go back to the mid/late 90's when the Rockies Natural Gas basin was one of the most traded hubs at every company as the supply/demand balance swung from having open pipeline capacity to no place for the molecules to go. As we moved into the new decade, the .Com crash moved markets to new lows while the 2005-2007 time period saw the Rockies Express Pipeline change the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 29, 2020 | |
| The month of April has come and gone with many of us balancing the work at home act with the full-time job of home schooling the kids as they forge ahead with online classes. As we look ahead to the month of May, there are still a lot of unknowns as the conversations are tied to the economic recovery at the state level, what social distancing looks like and how will the virus react to essential businesses getting back into the swing of things. The one thing that is somewhat normal during this chaos is the Pacific Norhwest Hydro runoff season as the month of May typically gets warm enough to start having the middle to upper elevation snowpack make its way down the mountains and into the river basins. The two key basins that we monitor in our Pacific Northwest Hydro Package ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 28, 2020 | |
| Crude prices continue to be under pressure thanks to the ongoing quarantine efforts and the mounting tanker inventory on the world's oceans. It is assumed that the lower 48 crude storage inventory will be full, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve some time prior to this summer. The SPR resides along the US Gulf Coast. Most of the caverns are salt formations that have been created for the purpose of holding the crude oil as an emergency stockpile. There are a number of caverns in the region that are also dedicated to holding natural gas inventory. The EIA reports this storage every Thursday morning. In the past three reports the NG salt storage stocks have climbed by 45 BCF taking the total amount to 301 BCF. With injections continuing at that current pace it is very feasible to have ... » read more | |
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