SoCalGas

Closing midstream deals has been a bit of a challenge in 2020, to say the least. In fact, this has been a year when many projects have been sidelined or cancelled outright, with most decisions on even the best prospects getting pushed to next year. But it hasn’t been all bad news. In a few cases, assets with advantages have made it across the finish line, even in the land of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects. Despite this summer’s collapse in U.S. LNG exports, driven by a compression of the spreads in global gas prices, Sempra Energy recently announced that it is going ahead with Phase 1 at its Costa Azul liquefaction project in Mexico’s Baja California. How did they pull this off in such a tumultuous year? Well, Costa Azul isn’t your everyday LNG export project. Today, we detail the most recent U.S. LNG export project to receive a final investment decision (FID) to proceed.

It’s no secret by now that Permian natural gas pipelines have been running near full the last few months, jam-packed like Southern California traffic while trying to whisk away copious volumes of mostly associated natural gas to markets north, south, west and east of the basin. Despite every major artery running near capacity this summer, Permian prices had so far managed to avoid falling below the dreaded $1.00/MMBtu threshold, a precipice that historically defines a gas producing basin as definitively oversupplied. That all changed yesterday, as word came in that Southern California Gas Company, one of the largest recipients of Permian gas, has nearly filled its gas storage caverns and will soon need far less gas hitting its borders. That’s particularly bad news for the Permian, which has few other options if it needs to reduce the supply that is currently flowing west out of the basin to California. A large unplanned outage for maintenance was also announced on one of the pipelines leaving the Permian and heading north to the Midcontinent. As a result, the SoCalGas news and maintenance combined to put a huge dent in Permian gas prices, some of which plunged as low as 50 cents in Wednesday’s trading. Today, we detail this most recent development and the implications for Permian gas takeaway.