TETCO

This year has been a mixed bag for Appalachian natural gas producers. Outright prices in the region are higher than they’ve been in a few years, thanks to lower storage inventory levels and robust LNG export demand. However, regional basis (local prices vs. Henry Hub) is weaker year-on-year as higher production volumes have led to record outbound flows from Appalachia and are threatening to overwhelm existing pipeline takeaway capacity. Last month, Equitrans Midstream officially announced that the start-up of its long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project will be pushed to summer 2022 at the earliest. Then, just last week, outbound capacity took another hit as Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline was denied regulatory approval to continue operating at its maximum allowable pressure, effectively lowering the line’s Gulf Coast-bound capacity by nearly 0.75 Bcf/d, or ~40%, for an undefined period. Today, we consider the impact of this latest development on pipeline flows, production, and pricing.

In many ways, the natural gas shortages and price spikes that came with last week’s Deep Freeze had nothing at all to do with hydrogen. There were no “green” hydrogen plants that froze up in the cold, no withdrawals of stored hydrogen into distributed local fuel cells backing the power grid, no shortages of fuel for hydrogen vehicles. None of that occurred because hardly any of that infrastructure exists just yet. But that doesn’t mean there was no link between last week’s natural gas market and existing forms of hydrogen production, namely “gray” hydrogen used to produce ammonia, most of which is used in the manufacture of fertilizers, and which makes up about a quarter of the hydrogen market. In fact, there was a strong connection, one that highlights the flexibility of industrial natural gas use during price spikes and possibly exposes a vulnerability in gray hydrogen production. Today, we continue our series on hydrogen with a look at how the ammonia industry responded to the recent spike in natural gas prices.

Ten weeks after an explosion crippled a key natural gas takeaway route out of the Marcellus/Utica, the capacity finally has been fully restored. Texas Eastern Transmission two days ago said it’s lifting all restrictions on the affected section of pipe. The outage began on January 21 and partial service resumed eight days later, but TETCO’s Northeast production receipts during the event averaged about 700 MMcf/d lower than usual and the line’s flows to the Gulf Coast were cut by 30-40%. That, along with two severe polar-vortex periods in January that overlapped with the outage, caused a reshuffling of flows across other pipelines in the region. Today, we wrap up this series with a look at the implications of the outage on the Northeast gas market and what to expect now that it’s ended.

In a world where Marcellus/Utica natural gas supplies and Gulf Coast gas demand are increasingly interdependent, what would happen if flows along a critical route connecting the two regions were disrupted? The market caught a glimpse of that on January 21, when an explosion on Texas Eastern Transmission’s 30-inch line in Noble County, OH, shut down flows through its Berne compressor, which serves as a key gateway for Gulf Coast-bound gas out of Appalachia. Partial service was restored a few days later, but a chunk of the capacity remains offline as repairs are completed, and southbound volumes are running at 60% of what they were prior to the outage. Not too long ago, an outage severing Northeast producers’ access to a major takeaway route to the Gulf would have hammered Northeast supply prices, even during the peak winter demand months. But as expansion projects have vastly improved pipeline connectivity within Appalachia and takeaway capacity out of the region, they’ve transformed how some of those legacy long-haul pipelines function and even the role they play in the market. The TETCO outage provides a glimpse into what that will mean for the Northeast and its downstream markets. In today’s blog, we begin a series looking at the implications of a well-connected Marcellus/Utica, starting with a recap of the TETCO event and its immediate impacts on southbound flows.

Natural gas deliveries for export via Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana reached a record in late July, topping 2.5 Bcf/d. In the first seven months of 2017, exports have added an average of 1.5 Bcf/d — or more than 300 Bcf total — of baseload gas demand year on year. Thus far, the terminal has been operating with three liquefaction trains. Now the fourth train, which would bring on another 650-MMcf/d of potential export demand, is nearing completion. The incremental gas deliveries are scheduled to come just as winter heating season is kicking off and likely will tighten the gas market. Today, we look at the latest developments at the terminal.

Northeast producers are about to get a new path to target LNG export demand at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal. Cheniere in late December received federal approval to commission its new Sabine Pass lateral—the 2.1-Bcf/d East Meter Pipeline. Also in late December, Williams indicated in a regulatory filing that it anticipates a February 1, 2017 in-service date for its 1.2-Bcf/d Gulf Trace Expansion Project, which will reverse southern portions of the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line to send Northeast supply south to the export facility via the East Meter pipe. Today we provide an update on current and upcoming pipelines supplying exports from Sabine Pass.

After years of debate and speculation regarding prospects for U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the first cargo left the Gulf Coast around 8:30 pm EST Wednesday (February 24, 2016) from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal, according to Genscape’s global LNG cargo monitoring service. The vessel carrying a little more than 3.0 Bcf of LNG is reportedly bound for Petrobras in Brazil. The incremental export demand that this LNG cargo and others like it to follow represent, is potentially good news for U.S. gas producers, with benchmark futures prices at Henry Hub, LA closing yesterday (February 25, 2016) near record seasonal lows at $1.711/MMBtu in the face of mild winter demand, record production and brimming storage levels. Today we look at how this first cargo was supplied and what that tells us about current and future impact to flows and regional prices.

As we stated in Part 1 of this series, New York City will need increasing amounts of natural gas as it continues its shift from oil-fired power plants and oil-based space heating. New gas pipeline capacity to and through the Big Apple has been added as recently as May 2015, but the nation’s largest city still faces wintertime gas-delivery constraints that cause costly spikes in gas and power prices. Given the challenges of adding new pipeline capacity in one of the most densely populated parts of the U.S., developer Liberty Natural Gas is planning an offshore liquefied natural gas terminal that by late 2018 would inject gas into the city’s existing pipeline network on an as-needed basis. Today, we continue our look at the economics of using imported LNG to supplement gas supplies in the Northeast.

The start-up of Sabine Pass, the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in the Lower 48, is only months away, and the complicated gas-delivery logistics behind the project are coming into focus. Surely one of the biggest challenges has been assembling the long-haul pipeline capacity needed to move several billion cubic feet of gas a day (Bcf/d) to Sabine Pass from deliberately diverse sources as far away as the Marcellus/Utica. After all, the nation’s pipeline network was initially designed to move gas from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast and Midwest, not vice versa. Today, we continue our look at the challenges of securing and moving huge volumes of gas to LNG export terminals, the emerging epicenters of U.S. gas demand.

The six liquefaction “trains” under development at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal will demand nearly 4 Bcf/d of natural gas on average, the first 650 MMcf/d of that starting within a few months. And the five trains now planned at Cheniere’s Corpus Christi site—yes, now five, not three—will require another 3.2 Bcf/d. Taken together, that’s about 10% of current daily gas production in the U.S.; in other words, a monumental logistical task. Today, we start a series looking at the challenges of securing and moving huge volumes of gas to LNG export terminals, the emerging epicenters of U.S. gas demand.