This year will be a tale of two halves for the Permian. Natural gas production and pricing figure to remain fairly stable until the back half of this year, when more than 5 Bcf/d of new pipeline capacity comes online, giving the basin room to grow for the first time in a long time.
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.
The Waha Hub in West Texas figures to play a prominent role in supplying natural gas to Mexico soon, as pipelines connecting the Permian Basin to the international border are now complete and supplying small volumes to Northwest Mexico. As additional pipelines and power plants come online south of the border over the next 12 months, a meaningful ramp-up in flows from Waha to Mexico is expected. Facilitating those flows will be a Waha-area header recently built by a consortium of Carso Energy, MasTec and Energy Transfer Partners for Mexico’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). With 6 Bcf/d of capacity and multiple pipeline interconnects, the header stands to dramatically improve interconnectivity among gas pipelines at Waha, but it has largely stood in the shadows of Mexico’s pipeline buildout. Today we continue our series on the Waha Hub with a look at CFE’s Waha header and its expected role in handling Permian-sourced gas.
The pace of production growth in the Permian’s Midland and Delaware basins will be influenced by many factors, including the degree to which the market price for crude oil exceeds the play’s breakeven prices and the ability of midstream companies to add incremental pipeline takeaway capacity as that capacity is needed. While the pursuit of crude oil is driving drilling and production activity in the Permian, rapid growth in crude output is accompanied by large volumes of associated gas and NGLs that also must be dealt with. Fortunately, the Permian has been a major production area for decades — a lot of gas and NGL pipeline infrastructure is already in place. But it won’t be enough. Today we begin a blog series on the existing networks’ ability to move natural gas to market and the enhancements that will be needed to keep the Permian’s growth on track.
The acquisition of Williams Companies by Energy Transfer will create a midstream behemoth. The deal is expected to close during the first half of 2016 subject to regulatory approval. Once complete the main holding company Energy Transfer Corp (ETC) will be a C-Corp entity sitting atop Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs – see Masters of the Midstream for a more complete explanation of these structures) containing the assets of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), Williams Energy Partners (WPZ), Sunoco LP (SUN) and Sunoco Logistics (SXL). The combined natural gas pipeline network will carry as much as 45% of U.S. Lower 48 dry gas production. Today we take a look at the natural gas infrastructure assets in the deal.
