Intrastate natural gas pipelines in Texas reach far and wide, and can transport extraordinary volumes of gas. The problem is, the traditional supply/demand dynamics that spurred the development of all that pipe decades ago are being up-ended by burgeoning Marcellus/Utica production headed to the Gulf Coast and the demand-pull of gas to planned LNG export terminals along the Texas coast and to Mexico. Lone Star State pipelines that for years have flowed north and east to the Houston Ship Channel and beyond now must flow south and west. Today, we continue our review of efforts to rework and expand key elements of Texas’s intrastate gas pipeline network to meet growing export needs, this time with a look at plans by Enterprise Products Partners.
Daily Energy Blog
Northeast production growth, the primary driver of overall gains in U.S. natural gas output in recent years, has largely stalled in 2016. Rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica dropped to near six-year lows, and the region has been facing constraints—from takeaway capacity and in the past month or two from storage injection capacity. But market factors are again about to roil the Northeast: 1) winter heating demand is on its way, and 2) more takeaway capacity has come online in the past month and still more is coming before the year is up. Today, we review recent Northeast natural gas production trends using pipeline flow data from Genscape and assess factors that will impact regional production this winter.
Providing the capacity to transport Marcellus/Utica natural gas to and through the state of Texas to LNG export terminals and to Mexico will require pipeline reversals, new pipe and other enhancements along a combination of interstate and intrastate lines. In many ways, the long-distance part of the job––the reversal of large-diameter pipelines between the Northeast and the Lower Mississippi Valley––is the more straightforward; the greater challenge will be reworking the complicated pipeline networks between the Texas/Louisiana state line and the U.S./Mexico border. Today we review Texas pipeline projects being planned to allow increasing southbound flows of Northeast gas.
A total of 13 U.S. liquefaction trains with a combined capacity of about 58 MTPA (~8 Bcf/d) are either in early stages of operation along the Gulf Coast or under construction and scheduled to be online by the end of 2019. Of that, about 3.2 Bcf/d is being developed along the Texas Gulf Coast. Beyond that, a “second wave” of liquefaction projects is lining up, with as much as an additional 11 Bcf/d of capacity proposed for Texas by the early 2020s. While many of these second-wave projects may not get built, those that do will require the construction or rejigging of hundreds of miles of pipelines, particularly along that Gulf Coast corridor. Several of the first and second wave liquefaction projects have proposed to build laterals that connect to and branch out from nearby long-haul pipelines, creating new Gulf Coast-bound delivery points for Eagle Ford shale gas as well for supply that will eventually move south from supply basins as far north as the Marcellus and Utica shales. Today, we take a closer look at these liquefaction-related pipeline projects and how they will connect to and impact the existing pipeline network.
Natural gas utilities and power generators in southern New England will have access to additional gas supplies this winter as Spectra Energy brings its 342-MMcf/d Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) project into service. But Kinder Morgan’s planned 72-MMcf/d Connecticut Expansion has been set back a year (to November 2017) due to permitting delays and, more important, a multi-state effort to enable electric distribution utilities (EDUs) to contract for gas pipeline capacity for generators appears to have died, and with it prospects for at least one major project. Is New England destined to remain gas-supply constrained for years to come? Today we consider recent developments regarding gas supply in the northeastern corner of the U.S., and what they may mean for Marcellus/Utica producers.
Fundamental, far-reaching changes in natural gas pipeline flows within the Lone Star State to enable increased gas supplies to reach LNG terminals and Mexico cross-border points give new significance to the issue of federal versus state pipeline regulation. Given Texas’s independent streak, it comes as no surprise that federal and state rules are night-and-day, with the Texas regs being largely hands-off and the feds’ being very hands-on. The differences are worth examining because they affect project development, pipeline tariffs, relationships between pipeline owner/operations and gas sellers/buyers—even the degree of transparency regarding shipper contracts and daily pipeline flows. Today we consider the differences between federal and state regulatory oversight of gas pipelines in Texas, and why they matter.
New power plants in Mexico have spurred natural gas demand south of the border––and fast-rising gas imports from the U.S, particularly Texas. Thus far, pipeline exports from Texas to Mexico have primarily been supplied by gas produced within the Lone Star State, but a big squeeze is on as nearby Texas production volumes decline (particularly the Eagle Ford) and export demand continues to increase, not just from Mexico but from new liquefaction/LNG export terminals along Texas’s Gulf Coast. Today, we unpack the shifting Texas supply and demand balance and potential implications for the market.
Mexico’s power sector is one of three major demand centers U.S. natural gas producers and pipeline projects are targeting, the other two being the U.S. power sector and LNG exports. U.S. natural gas exports to Mexico are up 20% year-on-year in 2016 to date to nearly 3.5 Bcf/d––more than double the export volume five years ago––and are poised to soar past 6 Bcf/d by the end of the decade. Mexico’s energy operators are on a tear adding new natural gas-fired power generation capacity and building a sprawling network of natural gas transportation capacity. But delivering increasing volumes of U.S. natural gas to Mexico will require substantial changes on the U.S. side as well, particularly in Texas. Today, we continue our look at plans for adding pipeline export capacity along the Texas-Mexico border.
The increasing availability of LNG at low and relatively stable prices, combined with the ability to expedite the installation of LNG receiving/regasification infrastructure, has the potential to spur faster growth in global LNG demand than many have been expecting. If that happens, the current––and still growing––glut in worldwide liquefaction capacity could shrink in a few years’ time, and a “second wave” of U.S. liquefaction/LNG projects could start coming online by the mid-2020s. Today, we conclude our series on U.S. LNG exports with a look at how low, stable LNG prices may turn the market toward supply/demand balance.
After about four weeks offline for modifications and maintenance, Cheniere’s Sabine Pass liquefaction terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana began accepting nominal deliveries of feed gas starting last Friday, indicating the facility is due to ramp up to capacity any day now. Since the first export cargo in February, about 130 Bcf, or 0.6 Bcf/d, of natural gas has been delivered to the terminal. While those aren’t quite game-changing volumes yet, deliveries just prior to the outage were averaging more in the vicinity of 1.2 Bcf/d and indications are that deliveries could ramp up to more than 1.0 Bcf/d in short order with the restart and grow to more than 2.0 Bcf/d by the end of 2017. It’s clear that LNG exports are quickly becoming a prominent and inescapable feature of the U.S. natural gas market. Today, we wrap up our series on the growing impact of LNG exports on the U.S. supply/demand balance.
Handling the flood of Marcellus/Utica gas headed to Gulf Coast LNG export terminals and to Mexico will require pipeline reversals and expansions, new pipe and a coordination of interstate and intrastate pipeline capacity. That’s a tall order in itself, but there’s more: Texas’s intrastate pipelines operate under an entirely different set of regulations than their interstate counterparts––different rules on pipeline tariff rates, pipeline rules, permitting, eminent domain, you name it. In today’s blog we continue our look at developmental history of the Lone Star State’s two gas pipeline systems––one regulated in Washington, DC and the other in Austin––and how it may affect the transformation of the overall natural gas transportation grid.
There is a natural gas renaissance of sorts happening south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The state-owned Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) is investing heavily in expanding and modernizing its power generation fleet with thousands of megawatts of new, natural gas-fired power plants, and the energy secretary also last October put forth an aggressive five-year plan to build out a pipeline system to supply growing gas-fired generation demand. Mexico’s power generation demand is increasingly a target for U.S. gas producers and pipeline projects. At the same time, as we discuss in Part 2 of RBN’s Miles and Miles of Texas Drill-Down Report published last week, a good portion of this new demand is relying on — and in large part has been driven by — availability of low-priced gas from the U.S. via Texas and the U.S. Southwest states. But there is a lot that needs to happen on both sides of the border over the next few years to facilitate this mutually beneficial relationship. Already since October, Mexico’s newly appointed independent pipeline operator, Centro Nacional de Control del Gas Natural (CENAGAS), has pulled back on the pipeline buildout. Today, we begin a two-part series on how plans to facilitate this new demand are progressing, starting on the Mexico side of things.
Texas’s vast natural gas pipeline network is undergoing a major transformation to enable gas from the Marcellus/Utica shale plays to flood south/southwest into and through Texas to LNG export terminals and to Mexico. To grasp the complexity of the task at hand, it is critically important to understand how Texas’s “spaghetti bowl” of interstate and intrastate pipeline systems evolved in parallel but under very different regulatory constructs, and with the intention of serving very different market needs. In today’s blog, we begin an examination of the state’s two pipeline systems––one regulated by the Feds in Washington, DC and the other by the Texas Railroad Commission in Austin, TX––and why the intrastate system has taken on a new significance for U.S. natural gas markets.
Developing a multibillion-dollar liquefaction/LNG export project takes perseverance and patience––and having good luck wouldn’t hurt. The “first wave” of U.S. projects is now cresting; the first two liquefaction “trains” at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG facility are essentially complete, and 12 other trains are under construction and scheduled to come online in the 2017-19 period. But what about the “second wave” of projects that was supposed to be arriving soon thereafter? Today we continue our series on the next round of U.S. LNG projects with a run-through of the projects themselves and a look at how (despite the current market gloom) there is at least some cause for optimism that a few may get built by the early 2020s.
Over the next three years, 16 pipeline projects are in the works to add more than 14 Bcf/d of new take-away capacity to move Marcellus/Utica natural gas to the south and west, relieving takeaway capacity constraints that have plagued the Northeast since 2012-13. Much of this gas will be moved to the Gulf Coast, primarily via reversals of pipes that traditionally transported gas north and east, and will target rapidly growing LNG and Mexico export markets. But few of these pipeline projects get the gas all the way to those export outlets. The new supplies must traverse “Miles and Miles of Texas” (and Louisiana) to reach the export gateways and along the way deal with shifting production trends within the state, pipeline systems that are "telescoped the wrong way" constraining capacity of the Texas pipeline grid, and unique regulatory considerations associated with Texas intrastate pipelines. These issues are addressed in RBN’s latest Drill Down Report, highlights of which we discuss in today’s blog.
