Beginning with this month’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we are including new regional crude oil and natural gas production forecasts to provide a more complete breakout of U.S. Lower 48 (L48) states production data.
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The amount of crude oil and oil products flowing around the Cape of Good Hope, located at the southern tip of Africa, increased nearly 50% in the first five months of 2024 compared with the 2023 average as commercial vessels avoided chokepoints in the Middle East.
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Parts of the United States could be at risk for electricity supply shortages if electricity demand peaks are higher than anticipated or if less electricity is generated than expected, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) 2024 Summer Reliability Assessment. Under normal summer demand conditions, NERC expects the continental United States to have adequate power resources this year.
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Developers in the United States have plans to expand hydrogen production using technologies that make use of electricity, an early sign that hydrogen production could move away from its current reliance on hydrocarbon feedstocks in the coming years.
Read More ›Tags: electricity, map, production/supply, hydrogen
Sales of bunker fuel in Singapore, the world’s largest bunkering fuel port, have increased to all-time highs, indicating increased global consumption as cargo ships, tankers, and other marine vessels take longer routes to avoid the Red Sea. Ship operators have been avoiding the Red Sea following Yemen-based Houthi militia attacks that began in November 2023.
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As average prices of U.S. natural gas fell in 2023, natural gas prices also became less volatile compared with 2022. Historical volatility, a measure of daily price changes relative to average prices, eased from the recent highs reached in 2022. The measure of historical volatility we use here, which relates short-term price movements to average prices over a defined period, reached 171% for U.S. wholesale natural gas in February 2022, the most volatile since at least 1994. This 30-day historical volatility of U.S. natural gas prices is based on the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub front-month futures price. It averaged 69% in 2023 compared with 91% across all of 2022.
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Corrected on June 5 to update the data source for chart 2.
The value of energy trade between the United States and Canada decreased in 2023 from the record set in 2022 as energy prices fell, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Although the amount of energy traded between the two countries was largely flat in 2023, the value decreased by 20% when adjusted for inflation to $152 billion.
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We forecast that the natural gas consumed for electricity generation this summer in the United States will reach near the record set last year. Despite a 3% increase in overall U.S. electricity generation this summer, we do not expect natural gas consumption for electricity generation to grow. Growth in electricity generation will be largely driven by increased renewable energy production. In our May 2024 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast natural gas consumed to generate electricity will average 44.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in the United States during the peak summer months of June through August, matching the record high set in the summer of 2023.
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After years of either declining or stable domestic natural gas production, the Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo Brazzaville, began exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the first time when the first phase of a two-phase floating LNG (FLNG) project began operating in February 2024. The development of LNG export capacity will allow the country to monetize natural gas production that was previously either flared or reinjected into oil wells.
Read More ›Updated June 12 to clarify EU’s limits on the share of biofuels applies to those produced from food and feed crops.
Annual U.S. biodiesel imports doubled from 2022 to 2023 to 33,000 barrels per day (b/d) and continued to rise in the first two months of 2024, according to the most recent data available. Much of the increase in biodiesel imports has come from Germany, and the remaining increase has come mostly from elsewhere in Europe, where a biodiesel surplus has lowered prices.
Read More ›Tags: international, exports/imports, Europe, biofuels
On May 20, 2024, the Monday before Memorial Day, the retail price of regular gasoline averaged $3.58 per gallon (gal) across the United States, 1% higher than at the same time last year. After adjusting for inflation (real terms), average U.S. retail gasoline prices going into Memorial Day weekend are 2% lower than last year. The American Automobile Association (AAA) projects 38.4 million people will travel by car over Memorial Day weekend, an increase of 4% compared with last year and nearly 2% more than in 2019.
Read More ›Tags: prices, gasoline, crude oil, oil/petroleum
Meteorologists are forecasting a particularly intense Atlantic hurricane season this year; they expect 20–25 named storms with a possibility of 30 or more, according to reports from AccuWeather in April. Colorado State University similarly forecasts an estimated 23 named storms this year. The potential for a stronger hurricane season suggests heightened risk for weather-related production outages in the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.
Read More ›Tags: natural gas, refineries, weather, Gulf Coast, outages, Texas, liquid fuels, states, Mississippi, map, Louisiana, crude oil, Florida, oil/petroleum, Alabama
Guyana, situated on South America's northern coast neighboring Venezuela, Suriname, and Brazil, has emerged as a significant contributor to growth in the global supply of crude oil. Since starting production in 2019, Guyana has increased its crude oil production to 645,000 barrels per day (b/d) as of early 2024, all from the Stabroek block.
Read More ›Updated May 23, 2024 to correct data errors.
Light-duty vehicles (LDV) in the United States used more electricity than rail systems for the first time in 2023, according to new estimates in our Electric Power Monthly. We recently started publishing experimental estimates for LDV electricity consumption, which are not collected on our traditional surveys but are derived using a model. We compared these estimates with consumption data from electric utilities that report transportation sector end use, which is almost only municipal and regional rail systems.
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The electric power grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) recorded an all-time high for winter natural gas-fired electricity generation for an hour in January, according to our Hourly Electric Grid Monitor, when a three-day cold snap increased electricity demand. Hourly natural gas-fired electricity generation increased to 49.4 gigawatts (GW) for the hour starting at 7:00 p.m. central time on January 16, 2024, 1% more than the previous winter record of 48.8 GW set on December 23, 2022, and within 4% of the summer hourly high of 51.2 GW set between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on August 25, 2023.
Read More ›Tags: generation, electricity, natural gas, weather, Texas, states