Industry Insights & Opinions Archives -

Phillips 66 deepens Permian-to-Gulf integration with Zeus and Coastal Bend expansion

May 18, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) – Phillips 66’s May 18, 2026, announcement of the Zeus Gas Plant and a third Coastal Bend Fractionator represents a continuation, not a departure, of the company’s multi-year push to vertically integrate its midstream footprint from Permian wellhead to Gulf Coast markets. The release is strategically consistent with prior capital allocation signals, recent operating results, and

How a NextEra–Dominion deal gets done: What antitrust actually looks at, and what history says happens after

May 18, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett – The proposed combination of NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy is the kind of transaction that immediately triggers a visceral reaction. The scale is enormous, the assets are critical to national infrastructure, and the timing coincides with a surge in electricity demand tied to artificial intelligence and data centers. The instinctive question is whether

Energy Market Assessment: Freedom of When/What/How to work has us heading to more prosperity

May 18, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) – Freedom Of When/What/How To Work Has Us Heading To More Prosperity, With Profitable, Yet Affordable, Oil & Nat. Gas Prices Driving & Providing. Decision makers able to Do have today’s current month, closing crude oil futures price down at $101.02, down $11.93 from its April 7, $112.95 high. The Strait of Hormuz closing, with Operation Epic

360 Energy Pulse: What mattered this week in energy

May 15, 2026

(By Oil & Gas 360) – Energy markets are beginning to shift from crisis response to structural repricing. This week, tightening supply, weakening confidence in key shipping routes, and renewed coal demand all pointed to the same conclusion: the global energy system is becoming more constrained, more expensive, and more strategically fragmented. THIS WEEK’S 5 HEADLINES THAT MATTERED 1. OPEC

The Gray Swan in the Curve: Hypothesizing oil prices, supply response, and what comes next

May 15, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – If the first Gray Swan revealed itself beneath Iran’s tanks and the second hovered over the Strait of Hormuz, the third emerges where markets are most reluctant to linger: in the forward curve and the implications it quietly refuses to accept. This is not a forecast. It is a thought exercise

Canada’s energy basins: Onshore, offshore, frontier, and what comes next

May 14, 2026

(By Oil & Gas 360) Part II – If Part I is about what Canada has built, Part II is about what it hasn’t fully unlocked. Because the next phase of Canada’s energy story is not just in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It’s onshore, it’s offshore, it’s frontier, and increasingly, it’s global. For decades, Canada’s oil and gas system was

OAG360 Past Prologue Series: Just in time energy: Efficient, rational, fragile

May 14, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – (Part 5 of 6)- Modern energy markets are not broken. They are optimized. Over the last decade, oil and gas have been reshaped by a single, dominant objective: capital efficiency. Excess capacity was punished. Idle inventory was criticized. Returns mattered more than buffers. The industry responded rationally by removing slack from

Canada’s energy basins: A different kind of resource story

May 13, 2026

(By Oil & Gas 360) – Part I – Canada’s oil and gas story has never followed the same path as the United States. It hasn’t been defined by speed, short-cycle production, or the ability to rapidly scale in response to price. Instead, it has been built on something else entirely: size, longevity, and resource depth. That difference shows up most clearly in

The Gray Swan Above the Strait: Power, leverage, and the illusion of control in Hormuz

May 13, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – If the first Gray Swan resides beneath Iran’s tanks and inside its reservoirs, the second flies openly above the Strait of Hormuz. This is the domain of leverage rather than logistics, of influence rather than infrastructure. It is where diplomacy, energy flows, and great‑power competition intersect—and where markets persistently mistake management

Can the world really move on from coal?

May 12, 2026

(By Oil & Gas 360) – Coal has been written off many times before. Each time, it stayed. Today, the conversation is returning with more urgency. Climate targets, investor pressure, and policy commitments continue pushing toward a future with less coal. But the real question is no longer whether coal use should decline. The question is whether the world is

OAG360 Past Prologue Series: Oil is managed by policy, gas is managed by physics

May 12, 2026

(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – (Part 4 of 6) – One of the persistent analytical errors in energy markets is treating oil and natural gas as variations of the same problem. They are not. They behave differently, clear differently, and respond to pressure in fundamentally different ways. Understanding that distinction matters more now than at any point

Colorado’s natural gas fight signals a bigger energy debate

May 11, 2026

(By Oil & Gas 360) – Colorado’s latest energy battle is quickly becoming about more than natural gas. What began as a proposed ballot measure to create a constitutional “right to natural gas” is now evolving into a broader debate over energy policy, consumer choice, electrification, affordability, and the pace of transition. At the center of the dispute is Initiative

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