CAPP

Despite the highest natural gas futures prices in over a decade, its use for power generation in the Lower 48 has set records in recent months. This is in part by design: economics and environmental regulation have broadly favored gas-fired plants and pushed into retirement hundreds of coal-fired plants in the last decade or so, reducing price-driven fuel-switching capabilities between the two fuels. However, there’s more to it than that: a tight coal market, marked by low stockpiles, high export demand and record high prices, is limiting gas-to-coal switching even further, making gas burn for power much more inelastic to price. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at this key intersection of the gas and coal markets.

The latest forecast from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) was published a couple of weeks ago. In spite of lower crude prices CAPP continue to forecast growth in Canadian crude output to 2030 – albeit at a slower pace than previously expected. Continued growth means that takeaway constraints getting Canadian crude to market remain a key challenge – even though increased use of crude-by-rail has taken up some of the slack. Today we conclude our review of the 2015 CAPP outlook.

The latest forecast from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) was published last week (June 9, 2015). This annual survey of Canadian crude production, transportation and market demand differs from many forecasts because it is based on surveys of producers and refiners rather than price projections and models. In spite of lower crude prices CAPP continue to forecast growth in Canadian crude output to 2030 – albeit at a slower pace than previously expected.  Today we review CAPP’s production and North American market demand forecasts.