For the past several years, Western Canada’s natural gas producers have been forced to sit on the sidelines of too many broader price rallies as their main benchmark, AECO, languished at painfully low levels. Though an increasing number of producers have been steadily diversifying their price exposure away from Western Canada and AECO, even greater pricing upside might be captured if marketing arrangements could be developed to access higher international LNG prices via U.S. Gulf Coast terminals. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the steps that two of Canada’s largest natural gas producers have taken to capture that LNG price upside.
The Crude Voyager is a weekly analysis of U.S. Gulf Coast loading activity that explains the ebbs and flows of crude loadings, destinations, and geopolitical issues impacting U.S. exports. It outlines the major paths for laden tankers hauling U.S. crude all over the world and reflects the change in tanker departures to the main regions that consume U.S. crude.
AECO, Western Canada’s premier gas price benchmark — sometimes referred to as the Henry Hub of the North — has seen more than its fair share of pricing troubles in recent years. Various pipeline congestion issues, largely inside Alberta, the region’s largest energy-producing province, have often squeezed the AECO market during the summer months, resulting in painfully low prices for extended periods of time. We discussed the latest round of these congestion-driven price crashes in Too Low for Zero back in late August.
It was also usually the case that as AECO was crashing and subsequently languishing at very low levels, natural gas prices in other parts of North America — often right on Western Canada’s doorstep at its export trading hubs — were many multiples higher as congestion issues outside of Alberta (and its neighboring province of British Columbia) were absent. The end result was periods of extreme price volatility, periods of very low prices (dashed black ovals in left graph in Figure 1), and immense discounts to other price benchmarks such as the Henry Hub (right graph). Even when the Canadian gas market temporarily shifted into overdrive at the height of Winter Storm Elliott around Christmas, with record-high storage withdrawals and exports to its grateful U.S. neighbor (see Out of This World), AECO gas prices, though higher on cold weather in the region, barely registered a ripple from the storm’s passing (dashed red oval in left graph) and the chaos it wrought on other parts of North America that temporarily experienced much higher prices.
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About the song
“Money, Money, Money” was written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. It appears as the first song on side two of ABBA’s fourth studio album, Arrival. Released as the second single from the LP in November 1976, it went to #56 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart while going to #1 in several countries. Personnel on the record were: Anni-Frid Lyngstad (lead vocals), Agnetha Faltskog (backing vocals), Anders Glenmark (electric guitar), Benny Andersson (keyboards, synthesizer), Bjorn Ulvaeus (backing vocals), Ola Brunkert (drums), Malando Gassama (percussion), and Rutger Gunnarsson (bass).
Arrival was recorded between August 1975-September 1976 at Metronome Studios in Stockholm with Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus producing. Released in October 1976, the album went to #20 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. Four singles were released from the album, including the #1 hit, “Dancing Queen.”
ABBA are a Swedish pop/disco supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 with Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, and Bjorn Ulvaeus. The group’s name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. The group was highly successful in the seventies but split up in 1982 to pursue solo careers. After the huge success of Mama Mia, the musical based on ABBA’s music, the group reunited in 2016. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released in November 2021. ABBA has sold over 150 million records worldwide. They have released nine studio albums, two live albums, seven compilation albums, and 50 singles. They are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. “Dancing Queen” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. The group has no plans at this time to put out any new material after the release of Voyage in 2021.
