Over the past year, we have witnessed a sort of slow-motion meltdown among the second wave of North American LNG export projects. Appetite for new LNG expansions was already waning due to oversupply even before the pandemic affected demand, but COVID-19 brought project developments to a standstill. Offtake agreements have expired, final investment decisions (FIDs) delayed, and projects have lost funding or been officially put on hold or even cancelled. Just one project, Sempra’s ECA LNG in Mexico, was able to reach an FID last year, and with the pandemic still raging, for a while it looked as if that would be the last project in North America to take FID in the foreseeable future. It’s abundantly clear that many more of the remaining proposed projects will be postponed indefinitely, and probably never be built at all. However, the news isn’t all bad. With the worst of COVID-19’s impacts on international gas demand appearing to be over and the ongoing extended run of high global gas prices, all eyes are back on the second-wave projects that are in various stages of pre-FID development. The pandemic may have forced a culling of the proposed projects, but those near the top now have a clearer path ahead. In fact, several projects could realistically achieve FID in the next few years. Today, we begin a short series providing an update on the second-wave projects.
Daily Energy Blog
It’s not often these days that you read about gas markets in the San Juan Basin. In fact, the subject was probably never much of a hot topic because the San Juan has been something of an afterthought when it comes to Western gas markets, just a stop on the road between the Permian and markets along the West Coast and in the Rockies. However, those Western gas markets are setting up to be quite interesting this summer, as is the Waha gas market in the Permian, and understanding the mechanics of the San Juan is just one piece of the overall Western puzzle. In today’s blog, we take a look at the far-flung but increasingly interesting markets west of the Permian Basin.
There’s a fresh breeze blowing through the energy patch. Oil and gas companies seem to have turned a corner and are piling on the climate change bandwagon. They’re talking green, walking green, and many are in hot pursuit of government subsidies and tax breaks that are here today, with expectations that more incentives are on the way. Carbon dioxide is their primary target — it’s by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas and technologies already exist for permanently depositing captured CO2 deep underground. In fact, the U.S. is #1 in the world at this, accounting for about 80% of all the CO2 being stored globally. But it may surprise you to learn that much of the CO2 being squirreled away for eternity isn’t captured from industrial processes or exhaust. Instead, a lot of it comes from CO2 reservoirs in Colorado and New Mexico, tapped on purpose to bring vast volumes of CO2 to the surface. Why? So that CO2 can be put right back into the ground. Sound crazy? Well, it’s not. In the blog series we begin today, we explore the rapidly evolving CO2 market and the huge opportunities that await those with the ambition to pursue them.
IMO 2020, the mandate that ships plying most international waters slash their sulfur emissions starting in January of last year, was only another step in the International Maritime Organization’s long-running effort to ratchet down the shipping industry’s environmental impact. The group’s next focus, as you might expect, is reducing shippers’ carbon footprint — while no specific rules have been set, the IMO in 2018 laid out the goal of cutting ships’ carbon dioxide emissions by 40% from their 2008 levels by 2030. One way to move toward that goal would be fueling more ships with LNG, which emits 20-25% less CO2 than very low sulfur fuel oil. But as we discuss in today’s blog, shippers could augment those emission reductions by moving from the LNG trade’s traditional point-to-point model to optimization through cargo swapping.
Over the next few months, a variety of market players — crude oil producers, midstreamers, refiners, and exporters — will be making preparations for one of the most anticipated infrastructure additions in recent years. Actually, it’s not technically new; it’s the long-planned reversal of the 632-mile, 40-inch-diameter Capline, which for a half-century transported crude north from St. James, LA, to Patoka, IL. Line-filling will begin this fall and Capline will start flowing south from Patoka in January 2022, providing Western Canadian and other producers with new pipeline access to Gulf Coast markets. Upstream of Patoka, the impending reversal has been spurring the development of new pipeline capacity to supply the soon-to-be-southbound Capline, and in Louisiana, refiners and exporters have been making plans for the crude that will be flowing their way into St. James. Today, we discuss the broad impacts of the “new” Patoka-to-St.-James pipeline.
Today is a sad day for the world of oil tankers. Unless a miracle happens by 10 a.m. local time at the Hawaii Department of Transportation's Harbors Division, the last surviving iron-hulled, sail-driven oil tanker is headed to Davy Jones’ Locker. The once-proud, four-masted, 143-year-old windjammer will soon be scuttled by deliberately sinking her at sea off the shores of Honolulu. How could things have come to this? In today’s blog, we’ll take a trip down memory lane to explore how a spectacular, fully rigged oil tanker could have survived for so long, plying the oceans for this author’s former employer, only to be betrayed in her final years.
When it comes to hydrogen regulation, there are two buckets. The first includes safety and environmental regulations related to building and operating facilities that produce, transport, store, and consume hydrogen. There’s not much mystery here, just a multitude of rules from various organizations in place to cover the physical side of the hydrogen industry. That said, as hydrogen use is expected to grow over time, this bucket of regulation is likely to expand and maybe morph. The second bucket includes rules that are designed to provide market structure and incentives for hydrogen. This bucket is mostly empty, though, and for hydrogen markets to succeed, it will need to be filled up. Put another way, hydrogen needs rules and incentives that make it clear the powers-that-be want hydrogen to be around and thriving. In today’s blog, we look at existing hydrogen regulations and highlights the gas’s need for further regulatory incentives and clarity.
The Montney Formation in British Columbia and Alberta is exclusively responsible for the turnaround in Western Canada’s natural gas production in the past decade. Gas production in the Montney — a vast area with extraordinary reserves — has doubled in that time, with most of that growth coming from the BC side of the formation. This phenomenal growth story stems from a few key factors, including steadily improving gas well performance and increasing wellbore length, coupled with access to an established network of gas pipelines. Today, we delve into what has made BC’s portion of the Montney such as standout.
On the surface, it may seem that the LNG market has normalized after the past year’s tumult, and it’s true that many of the day-to-day disruptions that plagued LNG offtakers and operators have subsided. Mass cargo cancellations are a distant memory, and U.S. LNG exports have been flowing at record levels. Global demand has recovered, and buyers are back to worrying more about what they normally worry about: storage refill and securing enough supply for the next winter. However, in other ways, the pandemic and the more decisive shift toward decarbonization measures in many ways have fundamentally changed how deals for future LNG development will get done. Today, we look at what the global initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will mean for LNG project financing.
Appalachia natural gas producers hoping to get a big boost in pipeline takeaway capacity later this year were dealt some bad news recently. On May 4, Equitrans Midstream officially pushed back the in-service date for the already-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline. The 2-Bcf/d, greenfield project is the last of the major planned expansions that would add substantial capacity from the prolific Appalachia gas-producing region and help stave off severe seasonal pipeline constraints, at least in the near- to midterm. Previous guidance had it coming online late this year, but Equitrans said it is now targeting start-up in the summer of 2022, pending water and wetland crossing permit reviews. The news is far from surprising considering the numerous regulatory and legal challenges midstream projects, including MVP, have previously faced in the Northeast over the past decade or so. But the resulting uncertainty leaves Northeast producers in a tight spot. In today’s blog, we will consider the implications of the MVP delay for Appalachia’s outflows.
A lot of people know that Permian natural gas prices have spent many days in negative territory over the last few years, only to skyrocket over $100/MMBtu during the Deep Freeze in February. Those events were mostly viewed as transitory, driven by a chronic lack of pipeline capacity in the former case and a crazy round of arctic weather in the latter. It may come as a surprise to hear that forward basis prices for natural gas in the Permian are trading at a premium to Henry Hub for at least some months over the next year or so. How could it be that gas from a supply basin way out in West Texas, where gas is considered a byproduct, trades at a premium? The answer lies in the key infrastructure changes expected in the weeks ahead and a premium in forward basis for the Houston Ship Channel gas market. How long the Texas premiums will last depends on Permian gas production, which is starting to take off again. Today, we aim to explain the latest developments in Permian and Texas natural gas markets.
Ethanol is a biofuel that is found in nearly 98% of the gasoline purchased at retail stations in the U.S., in most cases accounting for 10% of the gasoline/ethanol blend. This high-octane, biofuel has grown in popularity around the world, particularly over the last 20 years, due to regulations that require or incentivize its use. As governments continue to evaluate regulations to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, ethanol has been overshadowed by some other biofuels lately but it is expected to continue to play an important role as a pathway for meeting low-carbon mandates. Today, we discuss the history, the production, and the still-evolving role of ethanol in the global push to decarbonize.
U.S. LNG export terminals are running at their operationally available and contracted levels and will continue to do so, with no economically driven cargo cancellations anywhere on the horizon. Global gas prices are well supported by low storage levels in Europe, and it will take time to refill inventories, which means these high prices are not going away anytime soon. The upshot: U.S. LNG will have a very different kind of summer than it did last year, when global prices were at historic lows and many U.S. terminals saw more cargo cancellations than exports. Feedgas in April this year averaged 10.77 Bcf/d, nearly 3 Bcf/d higher than last year, and as we progress into summer, the year-on-year delta will become even more pronounced. Barring any major operational issues, feedgas demand will stay around 11 Bcf/d, which is the level needed for the terminals to produce at full capacity. That’s in stark contrast to last summer, when feedgas demand cratered and averaged as low as 3.34 Bcf/d in July as cargo cancellations peaked. Today, we look at what’s supporting global gas prices, how that impacts export economics for U.S. LNG, and what that means for feedgas demand in the months ahead.
We all hope that by the time you read this the operators of the ransomware-impacted Colonial Pipeline will have been able to restore service to more of the 5,500-mile refined products delivery system — maybe even to all of it. In any case, the shutdown of the Houston-to-New-Jersey pipeline system on Friday both exposes the vulnerability of the North American pipeline grid to malevolent hackers and reveals how, by its very nature, that same grid offers at least some degree of redundancy and resiliency built into it. A lot of that ability to respond to a crisis, whether it be a pipeline leak or a hack by an Eastern European criminal group called DarkSide, involves what you might call “market-inspired workarounds” — alternative suppliers reacting to an anticipated supply void and potentially higher prices by jumping into action. Today, we look at what the ransomware attack on the U.S.’s largest gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel transportation system can teach us.
Plains All American has an extraordinary collection of crude oil gathering systems and shuttle pipelines in the Permian Basin, as well as full or partial ownership interest in a number of long-haul takeaway pipelines to the Gulf Coast and the Cushing hub. As important as many of these individual systems and pipelines may be, it’s the interconnectivity among these assets — and especially Plains’ crude oil terminals in Midland and other West Texas locales — that gives the midstream giant’s Permian infrastructure a value far greater than the sum of its parts. Today, we’ll discuss the important role that Plains’ two terminals in Crane, TX, play in balancing the midstream company’s Permian crude oil delivery network and providing destination optionality.
