(By Oil & Gas 360) – Sand rarely gets the attention. It doesn’t move markets the way crude prices do. It doesn’t dominate headlines like LNG exports, OPEC decisions, or geopolitical conflict. Yet without it, much of the modern shale industry simply doesn’t work. That reality is becoming more obvious again as U.S. drilling activity stabilizes, longer laterals continue
(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – For decades, the conventional economic narrative held that rising gasoline prices act as a direct tax on consumers, reducing discretionary spending and slowing economic growth. That framework still exists in textbooks, but real-world behavior—especially in the post-2020 environment—suggests the relationship has fundamentally evolved. The modern U.S. consumer is not responding to
(By Oil & Gas 360) – For decades, the oil and gas industry has been shaped by access to hydrocarbons. Increasingly, it is being shaped by something else, water. What was once treated as an operational input is becoming a strategic constraint across the energy system. And now, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure and hyperscale data centers is accelerating
(Oil & Gas 360) By Greg Barnett, MBA – (Part 6 of 6)- Energy debates often assume an external villain. Geology failed. Policy interfered. OPEC conspired. Capital fled. Technology disappointed. Pick a narrative and assign blame. Most of them are convenient. A few of them are complete. The uncomfortable truth is simpler. The system we have today is the one we
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
