Western Canadian heavy crude oil producers have a lot of rail tank cars on order but so far none of the loading terminals in the production region can handle unit trains. The pace of terminal development in Alberta is far slower than North Dakota in 2012. Because you can ship raw bitumen without diluent there are potential cost savings over pipelines but the load and offload facilities are more complex. Today we conclude our mini survey of Canadian heavy crude loading terminals.
Daily Energy Blog
Tuesday, 3/19/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
Monday, 3/18/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
Western Canadian heavy crude production is set to increase by more than 1 MMb/d over the next 5 years. Pipelines out of the region are full and new capacity is not expected online until 2014. Just like the Bakken in 2012, producers are looking more seriously at rail. The economics of getting crudes like Western Canadian Select (WCS) to market by rail instead of pipeline are favorable because of heavy discounts versus Gulf Coast equivalent crudes like Mexican Maya. Today we look at the rail options for Canadian producers.
Sunday, 3/17/2013
Category:
Natural Gas
Henry Hub natural gas futures prices are up 90 percent since their 10 year low of $1.907/MMBtu on April 19, 2012 – closing at $3.872/MMBtu on Friday. Over the same period the price of Gulf Coast ultra-low sulfur diesel fell by 4 percent to $3.027/gal. Nevertheless if you use liquefied natural gas to power a rail locomotive the equivalent fuel cost is about $0.48/gal (before adding in liquefaction and other costs). That is the reason why BNSF is taking a second look at LNG powered locomotive technology and Shell is building LNG plants in Louisiana and Sarnia. In today’s blog we review the appeal of gas-powered locomotives.
Thursday, 3/14/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
Canadian demand for diluent is currently forecast to increase by 300 Mb/d between 2013 and 2020. That picture could change dramatically if pipeline projects to transport heavy Canadian bitumen crude to the US Gulf and diluent to Western Canada are delayed or cancelled. In any case, developing plans to transport “raw” bitumen by rail seem set to reduce diluent demand. The possibility of lower diluent demand threatens the most promising market today for increasing US natural gasoline and lease condensate production. Today we complete a two part series on Canadian condensate demand.
Wednesday, 3/13/2013
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
The isobutane market has a traditional self-correcting mechanism whenever the market gets oversupplied - the iso vs. normal spread declines, the merchant isomerization units shut down, and the market moves back into balance. But there is a potential problem ahead for this orderly, self-correcting marketplace – shale. As high-BTU, “wet” shale gas production continues to push NGL volumes from gas plants ever higher, the supply of isobutane will be increasing proportionally. The math is simple. The more gas plant production of isobutane, the less merchant isomerization will be needed. Or is that really true? Could increasing demand for alkylate combined with increasing availability of propylene from dehydrogenation absorb enough isobutane to keep the merchant isomerization units running at high utilization rates? Today in our series on isobutane and isomerization we’ll look at the major isomerization centers, the major players, increasing export patterns and likely scenarios for the disposition of surplus isobutane supplies.
Tuesday, 3/12/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
The dramatic growth in North Dakota crude by rail during 2012 included large unit train terminals built to load 80 Mb/d or more. At the same time smaller companies successfully operated alongside the big guys – loading manifest trains at out-of-the-way terminals. North of the border in Saskatchewan, Canadian railroads are advertising their terminal facilities but most have limited capacity. Today we continue our crude by rail series with a look at the plethora [1] of smaller Bakken terminals.
Monday, 3/11/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
The physical market for Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk (BFOE) represents the delivery mechanism for ICE Brent Futures and is linked to crude oil contracts worldwide. This year the trading in the BFOE forward market has been limited to just 20 cargoes a month from the Forties stream. Today we describe producer’s efforts to increase market liquidity.
This is Part 3 in our series on the physical Brent crude market. What follows will make more sense if you read Part 1 and Part 2 first. In Part 1 we explain that the Brent crude used as a benchmark for international pricing that underlies the ICE Brent futures contract – is made up of crude oil produced in dozens of different North Sea fields and delivered to market in four different streams – Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk (BFOE). In Part 2 we explain the linkage between the small Brent physical crude market that trades in 600 MBbl parcels costing upwards of $60 MM at today’s prices and the Brent ICE futures contract that trades in 1000 Bbl lots. Prices in the two markets are linked together by a cash settlement process using a Brent Index price based on forward trades in the physical market. The Brent Index settlement is an exchange for physical (EFP) mechanism that ensures convergence between futures and physical markets.
The convergence mechanism in futures markets used to be something taken for granted in international crude trading. Futures exchanges like ICE and the CME NYMEX were considered an add-on service for the oil industry to hedge price risks - secondary to the physical market. That was the old days. Now futures trading volumes dwarf physical market transactions (in Part 2 we showed that ICE Brent futures trades 500 times the physical BFOE crude production volumes each day). Nevertheless the futures contracts still have to relate back to underlying physical crude oil prices in order to function efficiently. That can sometimes cause unexpected results.
Sunday, 3/10/2013
Category:
Natural Gas Liquids
Of the five natural gas liquids (NGLs), isobutane stands apart in its sources and markets. Isobutane comes from gas processing plants and refineries, but it is also the only NGL intentionally made from another NGL – it’s cousin, normal butane. It has a variety of exotic uses, such as aerosol propellant for everything from hair spray, to cooking sprays to shaving cream and since the early 90s as a replacement for Freon in refrigerators. A refinery process called alkylation is the largest market for isobutane, producing a high-octane gasoline blending component called alkylate. Even though it has robust markets, isobutane supply/demand balances are not immune to the growing volumes of high-BTU, “wet” shale gas and the resulting torrent of NGL production. And as gas plant isobutane volumes increase, there are changes coming to isobutane balances and the demand for merchant isomerization. Today we begin our series on isomerization by exploring what it is, why it’s valuable, and how it’s done.
Thursday, 3/07/2013
Category:
Energy
Does lightning strike twice? How about three times? Sure seems like the coal industry has been hit by three lightning bolts in the past several years: a recession that reduced demand for electrical power, low prices for competing fuels (i.e., natural gas), and new federal regulations on smokestack emissions. Today we review regulations that have left coal power generators singing the smokestack blues.
Wednesday, 3/06/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
Western Canadian heavy crude production from tar sands (bitumen) is expected to increase from about 1.7 MMbd/ in 2011 to 2.9 MMbd/d in 2017. Forty percent of that production is mixed with diluent (mostly natural gasoline or condensate) and shipped to the US market by pipeline. As tar sands production increases so does Canadian demand for diluent. That demand already outstrips local production - meaning Canada needs to import increasing volumes of diluent. Today we look at the potential sources of Canadian diluent supplies.
Tuesday, 3/05/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
Brent physical traders are members of an exclusive club that transacts roughly fifty 600 MBbl cargoes of crude a month representing about 1 MMb/d of production. ICE Brent futures traded an average of 500 MMb/d during 2012. These two markets are linked together by the ICE Brent Index that allows for cash settlement of futures. Today we explain the Brent futures delivery mechanism.
Monday, 3/04/2013
Category:
Natural Gas
It’s the first week of March 2013 – the final month of the natural gas winter season. This winter has been colder than last so far reducing the record storage surplus that we started the season with. Natural gas prices have traded in a range between $3.25 and $3.50/MMBtu so far this year. Production continues at or near to record levels however and higher prices will likely reduce gas fired power generation. That means summer demand could be lower than last year and the storage surplus would rebound again. Today we review the current natural gas supply and demand situation.
Sunday, 3/03/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
The US crude by rail industry has expanded rapidly since January 2011 as domestic crude production soared by 1.4 MMb/d over the same period. The growth of crude by rail followed pipeline bottlenecks in the Midwest that caused landlocked inland crudes to be discounted by upwards of $20/Bbl versus coastal destinations. That made shipping oil by rail to the coast a viable proposition in the absence of new pipeline capacity. Crude rail terminals in the Bakken now load over 400 Mb/d for shipment to coastal markets. Today we continue our survey of Bakken crude rail loading terminals.
Thursday, 2/28/2013
Category:
Crude Oil
North Sea Brent crude plays a critical rolet in setting world oil prices. Here in the US, most folks pay more attention to West Texas Intermediate (WTI) - the North American equivalent benchmark. We regard Brent as just a figurehead for the international market and rarely look beyond the Brent/WTI spread. Yet Brent crude assessments based on physical trades or the ICE Brent futures market are used directly or indirectly to price 70 percent of world oil. Today we begin a “deep dive” series explaining how the Brent crude market operates.
Wednesday, 2/27/2013
Category:
Natural Gas
Natural gas imports into the Northeast US from Canada have fallen to around 1 Bcf/d from 3 Bcf/d in 2008. Infrastructure projects are underway or planned to replace Canadian supplies with gas from rapidly expanding Marcellus and Utica production. US gas is already flowing into Ontario at Niagara and will flow into Dawn if one or more Utica gas export projects are built. . Meantime the proposed Constitution pipeline from the Eastern Marcellus to New York would replace Canadian supplies into New York on the Iroquois pipeline. Today we review the next pieces of the reversal puzzle.
