Permian producers led the U.S. exploration and production (E&P) sector’s remarkable recovery from the financial crisis that was spurred by the oil price crash in late 2014. Dramatically lower costs and higher well productivity led to strong margins even at $50/bbl oil and promised bountiful returns should oil prices move higher. It’s no surprise that investors flocked to the stocks of Permian-focused producers, driving equity valuations, as measured by enterprise value per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) of proved reserves, to multiples three or four times the industry average. Recently, however, there have been growing investor concerns that logistical constraints on shipping crude oil and gas out of the region could restrict cash flows, investment budgets and output growth, and on Friday, Baker Hughes reported that the Permian’s rig count was down (albeit by only four, to 476). Since May 15, stock prices of smaller pure-play Permian producers Concho Resources, Diamondback Energy, Parsley Energy, RSP Permian, and Laredo Petroleum have fallen 10-15%. One of the larger Permian producers has bucked the trend, though: Pioneer Natural Resources. Today, we explore the drivers of Pioneer’s current valuation and analyze the factors that could propel future growth.
Daily Energy Blog
Crude oil pipelines out of Cushing are filling up. With U.S. crude production approaching the 11 MMb/d mark, more and more production from the Rockies, Midcontinent and Permian is funneling into the Cushing, OK, trading hub. It’s getting increasingly difficult to get all of that volume to the major demand center at the Gulf Coast. The two major pipelines out of Cushing — Seaway and Marketlink — are near full capacity and differentials are responding as West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at Cushing is now trading at a $7.60/bbl discount to Magellan East Houston (MEH) at the Gulf. Today, we look at some of the major factors affecting the WTI-MEH spread, space on major pipelines between the two points, and potential implications going forward.
Natural gas producers in Western Canada, with their share of U.S. and Eastern Canadian markets threatened by competition from producers in the Marcellus/Utica and other shale plays south of the international border, for years have seen prospective LNG exports to Asian markets as a panacea. But efforts to develop liquefaction “trains” and export terminals in British Columbia failed to advance earlier this decade — for starters, their economics weren’t nearly as favorable as those for U.S. projects like Sabine Pass LNG. Then, by 2016-17, global markets were awash in LNG as new Australian and U.S. liquefaction trains came online, and the BC LNG projects still alive were either delayed further or scrapped. Now, with LNG demand on the upswing and the need for additional LNG capacity in the early-to-mid 2020s apparent, the co-developers of LNG Canada — Shell, PetroChina, Korea Gas and Mitsubishi — have attracted a new and significant investor: Petronas, Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company and owner of Progress Energy Canada, which has vast gas reserves in Western Canada. Today, we continue our review of efforts to send natural gas and crude oil to Asian markets with a fresh look at the LNG project and TransCanada’s planned Coastal GasLink pipeline, which will deliver gas to it.
Mexico has been slowly increasing import volumes of natural gas from the U.S., utilizing spare capacity in the newest pipelines south of the border that access supply from the Permian Basin’s Waha Hub. The recent increases have been muted somewhat by delays in completing other infrastructure inside of Mexico, but one of those big delays is about to be resolved. TransCanada’s long-awaited El Encino-Topolobampo Pipeline is finally nearing completion, and once it’s online there may be a surprisingly big gain in gas export volumes to Mexico. As most of this gas will be supplied directly from Waha, Mexico’s impact on Permian gas balances is likely to jump materially in the weeks ahead. Today, we examine the latest development in Mexico’s natural gas pipeline buildout and its effects north of the border.
The NGL sector is firing on all cylinders. Natural gas liquids production in the Permian, the SCOOP/STACK and other key basins is up, up, up. A number of new, ethane-consuming steam crackers are coming online along the Texas and Louisiana coast, most conveniently close to the NGL storage and fractionation hub in Mont Belvieu, TX. The export market for liquefied petroleum gases — propane and normal butane — is through the roof, averaging more than 1 MMb/d in the first five months of 2018 (almost all of it being shipped out of Gulf Coast ports), and ethane exports are strong too. What’s not to like? Well, NGLs don’t do anyone much good until they are fractionated into “purity products” like ethane, propane, normal butane etc., and the rapid run-up in U.S. NGL production — combined with the reluctance of producers to commit to new fractionation capacity — has the existing fractionation plants in Mont Belvieu running flat-out to keep up. Today, we begin a review of the NGL Capital of the Western World and considers why Mont Belvieu — as big as it is — is getting bigger.
On June 1, Energy Transfer Partners’ new Rover Pipeline began service on its market segment from northwestern Ohio into southern Michigan, effectively sending nearly 800 MMcf/d of Marcellus/Utica gas production to Vector Pipeline and its northern destinations in Michigan, and, by extension, to the Dawn Hub. This latest in-service has already shuffled flows in the region and pushed back on other supplies targeting the same markets, including Canadian gas imports. And that’s even before the project has achieved its full expected capacity of 3.25 Bcf/d. Today, we analyze the early effects of Rover’s first flows to the Michigan/Dawn markets via Vector.
The Permian Basin is awash in light, sweet crude oil that’s cheap to produce and easy to process. It’s so awash, in fact, that supplies are overwhelming takeaway pipeline capacity. The resulting bottleneck in West Texas has cratered prices in Midland, where West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — the region’s light, sweet benchmark — has blown out price-wise against the same grade in other locations, including Houston, with its crude-export docks. Less well known, but influential beyond its geography, is Midland West Texas Sour, or WTS. WTS is suffering from the same wide differentials as WTI at Midland, and those yawning spreads are dragging down the price of Maya, Pemex’s flagship heavy, sour crude. Today, we discuss some surprising ripple effects of takeaway constraints out of the Permian.
Western Canada is blessed with extraordinary hydrocarbon resources and in recent years has been ramping up production in the Alberta oil sands and in the Duvernay and Montney shale plays. The U.S. is pretty much Canada’s only crude oil and natural gas customer, though, and there are limits to how much Canada can export to its southern neighbor — especially in the Shale Era, with the U.S. producing more oil and gas than ever and meeting an increasing share of its own needs. So Canadian producers, midstream companies and others have been working to gain access to new, overseas markets. It has not gone well. Pipeline projects to transport oil and gas to the British Columbia coast have been set back time and again, as have plans for crude and LNG export terminals. At last, there may be some good news. The Canadian government has stepped in to help push through a critically important oil pipeline to the coast, and BC’s leading LNG project just signed on a major new investor/customer. Today, we consider recent moves that could finally allow large volumes of Western Canadian oil and gas to be shipped to Asia.
Drilling and completion activity in the Permian Basin doesn’t only produce vast quantities of energy, it consumes a lot of energy too, mostly in the form of diesel fuel to power the trucks, drilling rigs, fracturing pumps, compressors and other equipment needed to keep the oil patch humming. And while refineries within or near the Permian meet a portion of the region’s needs, rising demand for diesel there is spurring the development of new infrastructure — and the repurposing of existing assets — to bring additional fuel into the Permian from refineries along the Gulf Coast. Today, we discuss efforts to move more diesel to the oil fields of West Texas.
Three years ago, U.S. Lower-48 LNG exports were zero. Today that number is above 3.0 Bcf/d. Three years from now, U.S. exports will make up about 20% of the global LNG trade. Perhaps even more momentous, LNG exports will equal 10% of U.S. gas demand. That’s more than deliveries to the entire residential and commercial market sectors during the six summer/shoulder months each year. All of which means that U.S. LNG exports are quickly becoming a much more important factor in both domestic and international markets. The U.S. gas market is no longer an island. In fact, the long-awaited integration of the U.S. into global gas markets is upon us, with significant implications for infrastructure utilization, trade flows and of course, price. To make sense of these new market realities, it is necessary to assess the gas value chain from U.S. wellhead to global destination — in effect, to follow the molecule from the point of production, through pipeline transportation to liquefaction and export, and from the dock to destination markets. That’s exactly what we will do in the blog series we are kicking off today.
Gas producers in the Permian are facing the prospect of severe transportation constraints over the next year or so before additional gas takeaway capacity comes online. Left unchecked, continued production growth could send gas at Waha spiraling to devastatingly low prices for producers. However, there are a number of ways producers and other industry stakeholders could mitigate the growing supply congestion in West Texas, at least in part, and possibly dodge the proverbial bullet. The longer-term solution will come in the form of new pipeline capacity, which will shift vast amounts of Permian gas east to the Gulf Coast and potentially create a new problem — supply congestion and price weakness along the Gulf Coast, at least until sufficient export capacity is built there to absorb the excess gas. Today, we wrap up our Permian gas blog series, with our analysis of how these events will unfold, including an outlook for Waha basis.
With Permian production of natural gas liquids (NGLs) on the rise and available pipeline capacity shrinking, midstream companies are in advanced stages of developing projects that — if built on their current schedules — would roughly double the 1.2-MMb/d of effective NGL takeaway capacity in place today within the next 18 months or so. Much of the planned capacity is backed by long-term commitments from Permian producers anticipating continued growth in production of crude and NGL-rich associated gas, especially in the play’s Delaware Basin. Still, the pace of NGL pipeline projects in the Permian begs the question, is all that incremental capacity needed? Today, we continue our series on the NGL takeaway challenges facing producers and processors in cowboy country.
Crude oil pipelines out of the Permian are filled to capacity and the differentials between crude in Midland and in Cushing and Gulf Coast destination markets are wide and likely to widen. That has spurred Permian producers and shippers to consider every possible option for moving incremental barrels out of the play, including two old short-term standbys: tanker trucks and crude-by-rail. Cost isn’t a major issue — the price spread and the Permian’s low break-evens will probably justify the higher expenses associated with trucking and railing crude. But that doesn’t mean that badly needed truck and rail capacity can appear with a poof as if by magic. No, even wads of cash may not be enough to quickly round up the hundreds — thousands? — of trucks and drivers that would be required to make a significant dent in the Permian’s takeaway shortfall. And developing brand new crude-by-rail terminals can take a year or more — too much time to address the play’s more immediate needs. Today, we continue our look at the frenzied efforts under way to move more Permian crude to market.
Until the fall in crude oil prices over the past few days, U.S. oil and gas producers had been basking in the glow of the highest oil prices in years. Not surprisingly, in the first quarter of 2018 the 44 major U.S. exploration and production companies we track reported the highest quarterly profit and cash flow since the 2014-15 oil market crash brought many to the edge of a financial abyss. These producers put themselves into a position to benefit from the commodity price recovery by implementing dramatic strategic shifts and an operational transformation that emphasized operating efficiency, portfolio high-grading and financial discipline. Now, with oil prices softening somewhat, the prospects for continued profitability growth for the E&P sector as a whole are mixed. Today, we do a deep dive into the results and outlook for the companies in the Oil-Weighted, Diversified, and Gas-Weighted peer groups.
Natural gas supply growth from the Permian Basin has flooded the Texas market in recent months, filling up takeaway pipelines and sending Waha spot prices to steep discounts relative to its downstream markets. Incremental demand — from exports to Mexico for gas-fired power generation as well as for power demand in Texas — has provided some relief for West Texas prices in recent weeks. But Texas power demand is seasonal and, while Waha’s exports to Mexico are expected to continue growing, it’s likely to be on a piecemeal basis. Thus, longer term, new Permian takeaway capacity will be needed to balance the Waha market. To that end, there are a bevy of takeaway projects vying to expand capacity from the Permian. These projects — their timing and routes — will drive the Texas gas flows and pricing relationships over the next several years. Today, we continue our series on Permian gas, this time delving into the various takeaway capacity projects competing to move Permian supply to market.
