After holding well above historical levels in recent days, Northeast natgas demand is set to turn bearish to last year and the 5-year average in the second half of August as weather cools significantly. Regional population-weighted temperatures had been averaging more than five degrees above last year and more than three degrees above the 10-year average in the past couple of weeks but are called to abruptly drop starting today and average well below last year and the 10-year norm through late August.

News came last week that Williams, along with Shell Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, and the George Kaiser Family Foundation, had invested $10 million in a series A funding round led by Energy Innovation Capital for Aurora Hydrogen. The most recent round of funding comes on top of a previous award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

LNG traders absorb huge losses after supply outages (Reuters)

Major energy traders are taking hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as they scramble to plug a liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply gap after several outages hampered efforts to fill European storage ahead of the winter heating season.

Unplanned disruptions at LNG plants in the United States, Nigeria and Australia have wrong-footed traders, including BP and Shell, forcing them to pay inflated costs for alternative supplies.

Gross refinery input shot up 600 Mb/d to 16.92 MMb/d, which boosted capacity utilization up by 3.3% percentage points to 94.3%. This is the largest weekly jump since September 2021, when refineries got shut-in due to Hurricane Ida. Refinery utilization is currently at 100.4% capacity in PADD 1 and 98% in the much larger PADD 3.

Oil rises on renewed gasoline demand, weak dollar (Reuters)

Oil prices rose on Wednesday, rebounding from losses early in the session, helped by encouraging figures on U.S. gasoline demand and as lower-than-expected U.S. inflation data drove investors into riskier assets.

Brent crude futures settled up $1.09, or 1.1%, to $97.40 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained $1.43, or 1.6%, to $91.93.

U.S. oil output set for record 2023 despite slowing growth (Bloomberg)

U.S. oil production remains on track for a record 2023 even as output grows more slowly than anticipated amid surging costs and labor shortages in America’s shale fields.

Permian natural gas production is off to a strong start in August.  Field volumes appear to be at record levels and have averaged over 15.5 Bcf/d so far this month.

Ridiculously low Western Canadian natural gas prices heading into this past weekend and into Monday have become less a casual topic of coffee-break conversation and more of a global embarrassment for the industry. Near record-high natural gas production and various structural pipeline constraints have combined to push down prices to some of the lowest levels in the world.

Crude oil prices continued to slide last week and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at Cushing averaged $90.20/Bbl, down $6.71/Bbl on the week. Midland WTI averaged a premium of $1.67/Bbl to Cushing, little changed from the prior week’s $1.72/Bbl advantage.

Read more in the  RBN Crude Oil Permian Report.