Evaluate every utilization to identify your best utilization.

Blue Cube: Keeping you ahead of the competition

Because capacity volumes, losses, and charges assigned to a pipeline capacity agreement generally vary across input/output locations, a single capacity agreement can result in hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of segmentation options. Monitoring all these options for a single trading period (e.g., Cash, etc.) is difficult. Monitoring them for all trading periods (e.g., Prompt+23, Next Summer, etc.) only exacerbates the problem. And holding multiple agreements makes it essentially impossible to monitor every possible capacity utilization.

As a result, companies holding capacity rights face the daunting challenge of identifying their best utilization from all of the available segmentation options while simultaneously meeting their gas requirements and adhering to the ever-present pipeline scheduling deadlines.

To accomplish this, most transport capacity holders hire a team of traders to optimize their capacity agreements based on their deep experience. While this approach can capture a good amount of an agreement's value, it definitively leaves value on the table - both by missing opportunities for incremental uplift as well as by delaying the recognition of long-term movements in the spreads.

Blue Cube enables organizations to evaluate every utilization option, for every capacity agreement, for every trading period in real-time to definitively identify their best utilization.

How does Blue Cube Work?

Blue Cube is a Pipeline Segmentation and Optimization Solution that helps companies maximize the value of their natural gas pipeline capacity assets. Blue Cube utilizes a path-walking model and the power of the cloud to evaluate every possible capacity utilization in real-time and definitively identify your best utilization. Blue Cube’s engines incorporate a wide array of data, including positions, storage plans, current utilizations, pipeline constraints, location constraints, market prices/settles, and more, all to definitively identify your best utilization option. As prices or other inputs change, Blue Cube reevaluates every option to provide subscribers with up-to-the-minute guidance on how to best utilize their capacity to maximize their margin. Moreover, Blue Cube can monitor all of your capacity agreements against each of the trading periods (e.g., cash, prompt, summer, etc.) at the same time, in real-time.

Organizations with multiple Users share data (e.g. capacity agreements, prices, etc.). Blue Cube, using each individual User’s inputs directly from their screen in real-time, evaluates the economics of all potential utilization options for one or more capacity agreements and provides the User with up-to-the-minute guidance on how to best utilize their capacity to maximize margin while meeting their physical gas requirements.

Blue Cube help improve margins by:

Identifying opportunities for incremental uplift in capacity agreements
Improving the timeliness and accuracy of decision making
Highlighting changes in pipeline economics and the evolution of spreads
Helping staff hone their instincts and their familiarity with the spreads
Improving efficiency through automation

Does Blue Cube Support Pipeline ‘X’?

Yes, Blue Cube supports 100% of North American inter-state and intra-state pipelines. Blue Cube is a logical model and does not communicate with pipeline EBBs.

How is Blue Cube Deployed?

Blue Cube is deployed as a service (SaaS) over the internet. Subscribers access and utilize the Blue Cube service directly from the Blue Cube website.

Blue Cube subscribers don't need to worry about managing an application environment. There's no computer hardware to procure and no third-party software to install or manage. All that is required to access Blue Cube is a monitor, Google Chrome, and an internet connection.

As such,

Blue Cube is responsible for service uptime and data continuity
Blue Cube is accessible to subscribers anywhere they have an internet connection
Subscribers don’t need to buy or manage any hardware
Subscribers don’t need to license or install third-party software to run Blue Cube

How is Blue Cube Licensed?

Blue Cube is offered on an annual subscription basis under a named-user model. Pricing is primarily based on the number of capacity agreements modeled and the number of daily users, with term discounts. All subscriptions billed monthly in advance.

How is Blue Cube Implemented?

Blue Cube offers implementation services. However, subscribers may choose to implement Blue Cube themselves or to have their preferred consultants implement Blue Cube. Blue Cube's data capture screens are intuitive, fully documented, and include an easy-to-use import function. Once defined, minimal data maintenance is required. Blue Cube implementations typically take six to eight weeks.

While Users can always enter data via Blue Cube's screens, most customers prefer to feed quickly changing data (e.g., price, etc.) directly into Blue Cube via the Blue Cube API. Assistance on accessing the Blue Cube API can be obtained by contacting Blue Cube Support. Users may also utilize the Blue Cube Excel Add-In to feed data to Blue Cube from directly within Excel (the Blue Cube Excel Add-in utilizes the Blue Cube API).

At a high level, a Blue Cube implementation consists of the following tasks:

Base Data – define the relevant markets, locations, and pipelines
Model Capacities – iterative process of modeling and validating capacities
Define Scenarios – define your scenarios (each a collection of one or more capacity agreements along with analysis configuration parameters)
Define Trading Periods – define which trading periods to monitor (e.g., cash, prompt, summer, etc.)
Establish Data Feeds – implement price/volume feed, position feed (optional), storage plan feed (optional), constraint feed (optional)
Users – define which Users may access Blue Cube (cognizant of any licensing restrictions around third-party data) and create User accounts

Is Training Available?

Blue Cube offers functional and technical training to both Users and third-party consultants.

Customers may access training on any topic by contacting their assigned Customer Care representative.

Consulting firms interested in becoming Certified on Blue Cube Implementation should contact Blue Cube directly.

What is Blue Cube?

Evaluate every utilization to identify your best utilization.

Blue Cube Features

Blue Cube Benefits