Rocky Mountain Energy Economist

07/04/2023

My dad, Lt Col Greg Page (retired) leads the parade, pictured on the left. He stuffed his pockets with candy to throw to his grandkids as he walked by.

07/04/2023

Neola 4th of July Parade

It's great to be home!

Happy Independence Day, friends!

06/21/2023

I swung by XCL HQ in Houston yesterday and those guys have a lot of amazing things in the works. We're all dealing with a very complex natural gas take-away capacity issue in the Basin, but I can assure you there are some very smart and thoughtful people working hard to solve it, and also me. I was asked by UDOGM to give an update on the state of our natural gas infrastructure in October, so be sure to come to the quarterly collaborative meeting in Duchesne or tune-in online. I believe we'll have a good roadmap to the future by then.

https://youtube.com/

(Side note, Houston is the worst, don't go there. It's under a massive heat warning)

03/18/2023

"We’ll find a way to move gas from one side of the Basin to the other and then to out-of-state markets and beyond."
- Me

Production, exploration, services, logistics and processing/refining- they all move together in a delicate dance.

03/02/2023

Visited a new NG customer this morning in Wellington, just off Ridge Road. A good portion of their gas supply is coming in from the Uinta.

Blue Sky Energy will be applying a mild pyrolysis process to heat coal and coal fines to produce heavy crude oil and high quality coal char.

Great to see this project moving forward. Once they get their oil output to spec, we will hopefully also help them market their crude production. If all goes well, this single retort could put out upwards of 500bbl/day, and the second retort will double their output.

https://www.blueskyenergycorp.com/

12/21/2022

Concerning recent diesel gelling problems:

Just got off a call with my contact at Rinehart. He says Sinclair is putting out diesel good down to -20F, Chevron is at -10F, everything else is down to -4F (Big West, Holly Frontier, Marathon, Silver Eagle). This isn't gonna help you now in retro, but if you see some deep negatives coming up again in January, stick to Sinclair this season. I can get these details for you all ahead of next season.

09/29/2022

Had a great visit with some of the Basin's largest producers this morning, Finley CH4 and Uinta Wax, at their Ft Worth office. They are working with neighboring producers to develop long-term partnerships with Gulf refiners and to solve logistical challenges to moving lots of incremental oil and gas out of the area.

09/23/2022

Oil down to $78.50/bbl this morning, looks like the China meltdown is starting to impact demand. But I don't see a continued drop off into the 60s. Non-China demand is still strong.

09/08/2022

WTI TRADING AT $83.45 (10:36AM MST)

Way off recent highs, but not a real threat to Uinta production growth.

Drilling would probably slow if the price fell into the $50 range, and grind to a halt at $30.

09/08/2022

"U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 8.8 million barrels from the previous week. At 427.2 million ba r r e ls , U . S. c rude oil inventories are about 3% below the five year average for this time of year."

Crude oil inventories have greatly recovered from where we were only a few months ago, and yesterday's $4 fall is reflective of that.

08/29/2022

Summit Energy & Merrion Oil & Gas joint venture in Montezuma County, Colorado.

Mining bitcoin with gas that has been routinely flared for over a decade as a compliance measure for the state of Colorado.

We're swapping out miners with burnt boards today in preparation for a larger investment in New mining machines, Antminer S19J Pros.

This facility will be mining with about 180KW of total capacity, and should produce about $650/day worth of BTC.

We're hoping this will be the first of many similar locations throughout the four corners region.