Golden Pass Timeline Change Knocks Gas Futures

After a roller coaster over the past year, U.S. LNG feedgas demand has been holding steady at record levels of around 11 Bcf/d for nearly a month now, with the exception of a few days due to pipeline maintenance. With Train 3 at Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi Liquefaction facility online and price spreads to global markets favorable for U.S. exports, that’s where it’s likely to stay, except for maintenance periods — at least until new liquefaction trains start commissioning later this year. Two Louisiana projects, Venture Global’s new Calcasieu Pass facility and the sixth train at Cheniere’s existing Sabine Pass terminal, have both indicated that they will begin exporting commissioning cargoes by year’s end — ahead of their originally proposed construction schedules — a prospect that could boost Gulf Coast feedgas demand to even greater heights by the fourth quarter of 2021. In today’s blog, we wrap up this short series with a detailed look at the two projects and implications for LNG feedgas demand this year.

Progress for the second wave of U.S. LNG export projects, which already had begun slowing in the latter half of 2019, has come to a near standstill this year, with several developers delaying final investment decisions (FIDs). The economics for U.S. LNG exports have evaporated in recent weeks, and for the first time in the four years or so since the Lower 48 began exporting LNG, cargo cancellations have become a regular part of the U.S. gas market’s vernacular. International prices are signaling that oversupply conditions will linger for a while, likely well after COVID’s impacts on demand ease. Nevertheless, projects that are already under construction are pushing forward, including the last of the first-wave expansions and two facilities from the second wave of proposed projects. There’s also one more second-wave development that could take FID this year. Today, we provide highlights from RBN’s latest LNG Voyager Quarterly report.

The U.S. natural gas market’s exposure to global gas and LNG markets has come into sharp focus in recent days. A gas supply crunch in Europe and scant LNG cargoes have roiled the international markets and kicked competition into overdrive. European natural gas and Asian LNG prices are at record highs and locked in a race to the top. The U.S. gas market has been relatively buffered from the full extent of the panic-driven premiums enveloping European and Asian markets, constrained primarily by its limited ability to help meet international demand. In other words, the U.S.’s LNG export capacity ceiling is likely the only thing reining in Henry Hub prices from following European and Asian gas/LNG prices to the moon. As explosive as Henry Hub futures are these days, if not for the capacity constraint, they would be much higher. That ceiling is about to get a little higher, however, as two liquefaction projects — Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass Train 6 and Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass — get ready to export LNG from U.S. shores this winter, amid what’s already the most bullish Lower 48 gas market in years. In today’s RBN blog, we detail the timing and demand implications of these two projects.