In many ways, Mark Detor defines why it is important to work with an energy advisor with regional energy market expertise. Mark was born and raised in Syracuse, NY, and spent a good portion of his youth playing baseball, basketball, and football. And when he was not playing any of those sports, there is a good chance that you could find him in one of upstate New York’s numerous lakes and rivers fishing for trout or bass. Always good at math, but unsure of what to study in college, Mark decided to pursue an engineering degree.

One of Mark’s claims to fame is that he graduated from every academic institution in and around Syracuse. After completing his Associate’s degree in Engineering Science from Onondaga Community College, he attended Syracuse University, where he graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Math minor. A few years after completing his bachelor’s degree, he got his MBA from Le Moyne College.

While at Syracuse University, Mark worked as an intern for the local utility, Niagara Mohawk. He began working there after graduation as an Energy Utilization specialist. In this role, Mark worked with large energy users to help them capitalize on various energy efficiency and rebate programs being offered by the utility.

Given his acumen for working directly with customers, Mark ultimately became an Account Manager with Niagara Mohawk for the largest commercial and industrial customers in central New York. In that role, he applied his expertise toward a variety of energy-related projects, including the evaluation of complex cogeneration systems. When the electricity markets in New York were deregulated in the late 90s, Mark moved over to Niagara Mohawk Energy Marketing, which was the deregulated affiliate of the utility company.

Over the next twenty years, Mark worked for a variety of Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), including Select Energy, Hess, Direct Energy, and NRG.  There he worked with and helped hundreds of commercial and industrial customers throughout New York and beyond. An expert in both natural gas and electricity supply, Mark was able to help a countless number of clients make good energy decisions for their businesses. In 2022, Mark had the opportunity to join the team at 5.

Clients who work with Mark enjoy a higher order of service and energy advice.  They benefit from his decades of experience in both the regulated and deregulated electricity and natural gas markets. Today, he continues to live in Syracuse and is one of the most accomplished and knowledgeable energy advisors in the company. Mark’s three daughters, Samantha, Grace, and Brittany are his pride and joy. And when he is not working to support his clients, he loves to play a bad game of golf and travel.

Forward commodity markets were created to allow market participants to mitigate price risk for a given commodity. Long before the world ran on oil and natural gas, agricultural commodities traded in the forwards. By the 1860s, the Chicago Board of Trade was using standard instruments to trade wheat, corn, cattle, and pork. By the 1870s, the New York Mercantile Exchange was created by a group of Manhattan dairy merchants looking to standardize the chaotic butter and cheese markets. Over the next 100 years, these markets matured and expanded, but their purpose has remained the same: to create a marketplace that allows buyers and sellers to access a standard and liquid market that mitigates forward risk to commodity price volatility.

Often in commodity trading, it isn’t always the straight-forward market drivers that catch the market off guard. Rather it’s the counter-intuitive things that seem to side-swipe a market. Lately, there has been a negative correlation between the price of crude oil and the price of natural gas. This summer, a decrease in the price of crude oil has coincided with a rally in natural gas prices. This month, the inverse relationship between these two commodities will be examined in more detail.

Leaves are changing and temperatures are falling, which can only signify one thing: PJM’s coincidental peak season is behind us. In PJM, there are five Coincidental Peaks (5CP) that are determined by the five highest daily peak hourly loads for the summer. Once the 5CP season comes to an end, the utilities begin the process of calculating Peak Load Contributions (PLC) and capacity costs for the upcoming year. Typically, 5CP events occur in PJM when the hourly load forecast approaches 140,000 MWs. The summer of 2022 was no different.

There is no doubt that the rapid growth of utility-scale solar in Texas has helped the state meet its ever-increasing electricity demand during hot and dry summer afternoons. The 10X increase in solar capacity in ERCOT over the past five years has kept summer afternoon peak prices in check, contributing to almost 6% of ERCOT’s total power this year (over 17 million MWh of emission-free power). But all that shimmers in the West Texas sun is not gold, and as California is learning, solar alone will not solve the state’s capacity problems.

Imagine the reaction of a modest homeowner in America who received an invoice from their electric utility that was more than $1,000 per month, or a monthly natural gas bill that exceeded $500. While these figures may seem outrageous, this is the situation that many in Europe are facing as they head into the fall and winter heating season. Anyone who has shopped for natural gas or electricity knows that prices have consistently increased over the last 18 months. Many homes and businesses are seeing electricity and natural gas rates that are between three and five times higher than previous contracted rates. And while there is no question that this is painful, the situation in the United States is not nearly as desperate as it is in Europe. The chart in Figure 1 shows that the price of natural gas for January delivery at the Dutch TTF trading hub peaked in late August at over $100/MMBtu. Domestically, on August 23, that same contract hit its maximum value of $9.77/MMBtu, making the European price of natural gas ten times more expensive than in the United States for that October contract. Circumstances are similar in Europe’s electricity markets. In late August, wholesale electricity prices in France were more than five times the wholesale price of electricity in New York City. As Figure 1 shows, the price of that January contract has fallen in Europe (and domestically) over the last month, but it also illustrates the dramatic difference in energy prices on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Beta Crude Connector (BCC) project is jointly owned by Frontier Midstream Solutions IV, LLC (FMSIV) and ConocoPhillips. FMSIV is the operator of BCC. BCC is one of the premier midstream solutions providers in the Midland Basin. The BCC system provides crude oil gathering and transportation services in the Midland Basin across Martin, Midland, Ector, and Andrews Counties, Texas. This system consists of approximately 90 miles of crude oil transportation pipeline and 200,000 barrels of operational storage in the Midland Basin of West Texas. The BCC project has the capacity to deliver nearly 180,000 barrels per day of crude oil to multiple delivery points, accessing local refineries and connecting to multiple downstream pipelines.

Meet 5's Special Teams Captain, Michael Clifton. In this role, Michael helps clients beyond their procurement needs as they rely on him to find energy solutions that require meticulous research and analysis. He also manages a team of developers who keep our proprietary client analytics software, Level5, up and running. Find out how this Auburn University football player and alumni got the idea for his current title.

As the calendar flips from August to September, ICAP management season is winding down, school is back in session and both the Mets and the Yankees are in first place. And while this summer was pretty hot for New York baseball, it was very ordinary in terms of the temperature. The months of July and August are particularly important for electricity customers in New York because a significant portion of next year’s electricity bill, the capacity obligation, is based on how much electricity a meter uses on the grid’s one highest hour of demand during those two months.