Permian oil and gas production may have slammed up against capacity constraints, but that does not mean production growth has ground to a halt. Far from it. In the past 10 weeks, Permian gas production is up another 8% — a gain of almost 700 MMcf/d. Crude production now tops 3.5 MMb/d, with incremental barrels finding their way to market via truck, rail and new pipeline capacity — soon including Plains All American’s new Sunrise project, which will move more Permian crude toward the hub in Cushing, OK. Record-setting volumes of NGLs are streaming their way out of the Permian to Mont Belvieu. This market is moving so fast that if you blink, you’ll miss something important. So to get caught up with all things Permian, last week RBN hosted PermiCon, an industry conference designed to bridge the gap between fundamentals analysis and boots-on-the-ground market intelligence. We think PermiCon accomplished that goal, and in today’s blog, we summarize a few of the key points discussed during the conference proceedings.
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Crude oil production in the Rockies’ Niobrara region is up by more than 50% since the beginning of last year, spurred on by higher oil prices, ample oil pipeline takeaway capacity, and other positive factors. Natural gas and NGL production in the Niobrara — which includes both the Denver-Julesburg (D-J) Basin and the Powder River Basin (PRB) — has been rising too, to the point that there’s a scramble on to develop new gathering systems, gas processing plants as well as gas and NGL pipeline capacity. A number of exploration and production companies are upbeat about the region’s prospects; so are some midstreamers. But there’s a dark cloud on the horizon — at least in Colorado, where voters will decide in a few weeks whether to significantly restrict where new wells can be drilled. Is the Niobrara poised for continued growth or not? Today, we kick off a new series on Rockies production, infrastructure and prospects.
The final investment decisions by Royal Dutch Shell and its partners in the LNG Canada liquefaction and export project in British Columbia are a long-term boon to Western Canadian natural gas producers and to TransCanada, which now can proceed with its planned Coastal GasLink pipeline across the full breadth of BC. But the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat and the new 420-mile, 2.1-Bcf/d pipe won’t come online until 2023 — an eternity for producers in the region’s Montney and Duvernay shale plays, who through much of 2018 have been enduring profit-crushing price discounts for their gas relative to Henry Hub. Today, we consider the largest North American liquefaction/LNG export project to be sanctioned in several years, and why BC and Alberta producers wish it were coming online much sooner.
With a staggering 3.8 MMb/d of inbound pipelines, 3.1 MMb/d of outbound pipes and 94 MMbbl of storage capacity in between, the crude oil hub in Cushing, OK, surely has earned its nickname, “Pipeline Crossroads of the World.” But Cushing is more than a mere collection of pipelines and tankage, and crude doesn’t simply flow through the hub like cars and trucks flowing through a Los Angeles freeway interchange. Instead, much of the crude coming into Cushing from Western Canada, the Bakken, the Rockies, the Permian and other plays is mixed and blended within the hub, primarily to meet the specific needs of U.S. refineries and the export market regarding API gravity, sulfur content and the like. In other words, what goes in can be materially different than what goes out. Today, we continue our look at the central Oklahoma hub with an examination of the characteristics of the crude flowing in and out, and how they differ.
While many are getting ready for the usual trappings of fall — Halloween, Thanksgiving turkey and Black Friday sales — Northeast natural gas market participants are gearing up for their own seasonal ritual — gas pipeline takeaway expansions. Two days ago, Enbridge/DTE Energy’s 1.5-Bcf/d NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline received approval to start partial service for nearly 1 Bcf/d of capacity. That follows Williams/Transco’s Atlantic Sunrise natural gas project, which launched service for its full 1.7 Bcf/d of southbound capacity last week (on October 6). Also last week, TransCanada/Columbia Gas Transmission was given the nod for partial service on both its Mountaineer Xpress and WB Xpress projects. Then there’s Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline, which is awaiting approval for its final two laterals. Combined, these projects are poised to add more than 4.0 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica takeaway capacity before the coldest months of winter arrive. What does that mean for the Northeast gas market this winter? Today, we provide an update on Atlantic Sunrise’s early effects and other upcoming projects completions.
Anyone who’s shopped for a home is well-aware of the relationship between location and valuation. The same holds true for oil and gas producers accumulating a portfolio of real estate underlain by the most promising oil and gas formations. Recently, the most desirable neighborhood has been the Permian Basin, which has seen more than $70 billion in M&A transactions since mid-2016. While the entire U.S. E&P sector has returned to profitability, Permian players have generated the highest production growth, the best margins, and the most substantial profits and cash flows. There’s a catch, though: production growth in the Permian has led to serious takeaway constraints. Today, we discuss how the impact of these constraints is reflected in a company-by-company analysis of quarterly results.
The price of northeastern Alberta’s key crude oil benchmark, Western Canadian Select (WCS), has been dropping like a rock. Last week, the heavy, sour blend of crude fell to a $45/bbl discount against U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — the biggest differential in at least 10 years. With an unplanned summertime outage at a Syncrude upgrader now over, Alberta production rising and pipeline takeaway capacity static — at least for now — the value of Canada’s crude may have even bleaker days ahead, despite a recent global rally in oil prices. Today, we explain why Western Canada’s oil producers are facing the prospect of mile-wide spreads for months to come.
Just as midstream companies are in a fierce competition to build new crude oil pipelines from the Permian to the Gulf Coast, there’s a race on to develop what would be the first Gulf Coast terminal in a generation capable of handling fully laden Very Large Crude Carriers. There’s a lot at stake. Currently, 2-MMbbl VLCCs can be filled to the brim without reverse lightering only at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), and even if U.S. crude production continues to rise at a fast clip, it’s unlikely that more than another one or two high-capacity, VLCC-ready terminals would be needed over the next five years. And, assuming there’s not an overbuild situation, the project or projects that ultimately advance would be expected to be in-demand and highly utilized — VLCCs are the preferred mode of transporting crude to Asia and other far-away markets, and being able to fully load VLCCs saves the considerable cost and time associated with reverse lightering these supertankers in deep water. Today, we conclude our series on the fast-paced efforts to develop export terminals in waters deep enough to float VLCCs chock-full of oil.
The crude oil hub in Cushing, OK, is a big numbers kind of place: 94 million barrels of storage capacity, 3.8 MMb/d of inbound pipelines and 3.1 MMb/d of outbound pipes, not to mention a spaghetti bowl of connections between the many tank farms within greater Cushing. To truly understand the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” — what it does and how it works — you need to know the hub’s assets and how they fit together. Today, we continue our series with a look at the pipes that transport crude from Cushing to Gulf Coast refineries and export docks, and to inland refineries in the Midcontinent, the Midwest and what you might call the Mid-South — places like Memphis, TN; El Dorado, AR; and Shreveport, LA.
The U.S. exploration and production sector has reaped many benefits from its transformation to large-scale, manufacturing-style exploitation of premier resource plays, generating record oil and gas production while slashing production and reserve replacement costs by 50%. While increased efficiency and rising output have moved the industry solidly into the black after three years of losses, profit growth stalled in the second quarter 2018 despite a $5/bbl increase in oil prices to about $68/bbl. The cause is largely beyond the control of the producers: constraints on getting the increased output to markets. In certain producing regions, most notably the Permian Basin, production growth has far outpaced expansions to the infrastructure required to process and transport it. Today, we explain why these constraints are critical to assessing the outlook for industry profitability and cash flow over at least the next two to four quarters.
With the addition of new large-diameter natural gas pipelines like Energy Transfer Partners’ Rover Pipeline and Enbridge and DTE’s NEXUS Gas Transmission, the dog days of severely depressed gas prices in the U.S. Northeast will be diminishing (though not disappearing entirely), but they are just getting started for its downstream markets. After years of constrained natural gas supply growth, Northeast takeaway capacity appears to be outpacing regional production volumes more and more, and RBN’s analysis of production economics suggests that, left unconstrained, the Marcellus/Utica gas market is set to unleash an incremental 8 Bcf/d into the broader U.S. gas market by 2023, with the bulk of that volume targeting consumption in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions. In today’s blog, we walk through our outlook for Northeast takeaway capacity and gas production, and by extension, U.S. gas supply.
It’s crunch time in the race to advance the next-round of liquefaction/LNG export projects along the U.S. Gulf Coast to a Final Investment Decision (FID). And if we’re to assume that only a small number of these multibillion-dollar projects will get their financial go-aheads, it would seem eminently reasonable to put a win-place-or-show bet on a joint venture that includes the world’s leading LNG producer (by far) and one of the largest U.S. natural gas producers — oh, and the partners have very fat wallets too. Size and money aren’t everything, of course, but as we discuss in today’s blog, the team behind the Golden Pass LNG project plans to build its liquefaction trains at the site of an existing LNG import terminal with strong interconnections with coastal pipelines already in place.
China exceeded Canada as the largest buyer of U.S. crude exports for the first time in February 2017 and in year-to-date 2018 has averaged 378 Mb/d versus Canada’s 347 Mb/d. Ramping up purchases from virtually nothing in 2015 to more than 500 Mb/d in June 2018 was no small feat — the logistics in getting that much oil across the world include multiple ship-to-ship transfers, several weeks at sea and a whole lot of negotiating between U.S. crude marketers and the major Chinese buyers: Unipec and PetroChina. That already complicated process has recently been made just a little more complicated by the escalating trade war rhetoric between the U.S. and China. In today’s blog, which launches our new Crude Voyager service, we explain how crude flows to China are evolving.
Thanks to the shale revolution, U.S. refiners have spent the better part of the last two years achieving milestones in export volumes and run rates. The U.S. exported record volumes of gasoline and diesel last year. Much of that newfound international market share came at the expense of ailing refining complexes in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. That worked out great for U.S. refiners on the Gulf Coast, who could load up a tanker of fuel and have it delivered within a matter of days. Now the market on both sides of the border is shifting; the political landscape has changed in Mexico and gasoline demand growth in the U.S. is threatened by higher oil prices. Today, we lay out factors impacting exports and demand in the U.S. gasoline market.
Florida’s electric utilities are turning to natural gas-fired power and renewables for all their incremental generation needs and as replacements for the older coal units they’ve been retiring. The state’s big bet on natural gas has been spurring the development of new pipelines. And, because of big shifts in where gas is being produced and where it’s flowing, the Sunshine State will soon be receiving an increasing share of its gas needs from the Marcellus region. Today, we discuss the slew of new gas-fired power plants that have come online, the additional plants planned, and gas flows on Sabal Trail, the first new gas mainline into the state in almost two decades.
U.S. LNG exports have climbed from zero three years ago to more than 3 Bcf/d now, and export capacity is set to grow to more than 10 Bcf/d by 2023. With the U.S. emerging as a dominant player in the global LNG landscape, international players are now increasingly susceptible to the day-to-day fluctuations of the U.S. natural gas market — a highly liquid, fungible and interconnected arena that’s propelled by constantly shifting transportation economics. The global LNG market inevitably is also moving toward spot-oriented trading based on short-term economic conditions. Thus, prospective buyers of U.S. LNG considering pre-FID projects increasingly need to understand the ever-changing U.S. gas flow and pricing dynamics. At the same time, U.S. market participants trying to understand how 10 Bcf/d of LNG exports will affect the domestic market also will need to closely track LNG activity, including feedgas flows and prices. In today’s blog — which launches our new LNG Voyager service — we look at how U.S. onshore gas market dynamics are affecting gas supply costs at the Sabine Pass LNG facility, and considers what this might mean for several of the pre-FID projects.