NGL

After a series of construction setbacks, the Panama Canal expansion is finally expected to come online by mid-2016. The wider, deeper canal locks will enable any LPG ship (up through Very Large Gas Carriers, or VLGCs) on the planet to take the time- and money-saving short-cut, and also will accommodate all but a few of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels. That can only help U.S. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and LNG exporters, who for competitive reasons need the low transportation costs to Pacific Basin markets that shipping in super-bulk will provide. Today we discuss how the expansion project may boost exports of hydrocarbons from the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Prices headed up!!  That’s something that you haven’t heard much lately.   But big changes are just over the horizon for NGLs as new petrochemical plants and export projects come online.   These projects will encounter a market environment far different than what was expected when they were being planned.  Instead of an oversupplied market driving NGLs lower relative to crude oil and natural gas, the projects will confront a tight market, with NGL prices higher relative to the other hydrocarbons. In today’s blog we explain why what must go up must come down, and vice versa.

General Partners Phillips 66 and Spectra Energy control midstream Master Limited Partnership (MLP) DCP Midstream Partners (DPM). The partnership owns midstream transportation and processing assets along the natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) supply chain. Similar to many MLPs its Limited Partner unit price has declined by more than 50% in the past year. Despite exposure to difficult market conditions in the Eagle Ford and East Texas, a strong performance from the NGL logistics segment is expected to propel a 20% gain in net income between 2015 and 2017. Today we review our latest spotlight analysis report on DPM.

ONEOK Partners (OKS) own and operate one of the largest natural gas liquid (NGL) networks in the U.S. Like most midstream Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), OKS’ stock price has dropped by more than 50% since mid-2014.  This despite the fact that most of ONEOK’s revenues are not directly impacted by lower crude and natural gas prices. Today we introduce the first of our new Spotlight reports (a joint venture between RBN and East Daley) available exclusively to Backstage Pass subscribers- that feature deep-dive fundamental analysis of select energy players’ operating assets. The first report features ONEOK and indicates that the company has a strong portfolio of fee based business fed by some of the most attractive producing basins in the U.S., particularly the Bakken which has the potential to amplify the company’s performance both to the upside and downside.

Ethane has been in the doghouse for years since the shale gas boom kicked in, with production greatly exceeding demand and hundreds of thousands of barrels per day being “rejected” into the natural gas stream – owing to the fact that netbacks for liquid ethane are lower than pipeline natural gas. One way to understand that relationship is to track the price ratio of ethane at Mont Belvieu, TX to natural gas at Henry Hub, compared on a BTU basis.  That ratio of ethane-to-gas languished at 95% between Q1 2014 through the summer of this year, and in November 2014 dipped to only 61%.  That means that the BTU value of ethane at that point was only 61% of natural gas. Ethane that cheap is an awesome value for steam crackers using the feedstock to produce ethylene and other petrochemicals.  But a couple of months ago (September 2015), the price of ethane started to ramp up relative to gas, blasting through 140% in late October.  Is that bad news for future ethane prices? What does that portend for ethane once all the new steam crackers being built come online and overseas exports – also coming soon -- ramp up.  Today we look at the recent rebound in the ratio of ethane to natural gas and consider whether this is a signal that ethane is out of the doghouse.

U.S.-based companies soon may have expanded opportunities in Mexico’s liquefied petroleum gas market—not just in supplying LPG from U.S. natural gas processing complexes and oil refineries but in storing and delivering the propane/butane mix to customers. The emerging opportunities are tied largely to Mexico’s efforts to open up and deregulate its energy sector, whose LPG sub-sector has long been dominated by the government-owned Petroleos Mexicanos and hamstrung by LPG price controls. Today, we conclude our series on propane/butane supply, demand and infrastructure South of the Border.

In a $38 Billion transaction announced September 28, 2015, Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) agreed to gobble up The Williams Companies in a deal expected to close during the first half of 2016. The combination of these two companies creates a U.S. midstream giant that will own infrastructure including gas pipelines carrying as much as 45% of U.S. Lower 48 dry gas production, processing capacity producing16% of domestic natural gas liquids (NGL’s) and crude oil pipelines in the Permian, Eagle Ford and Bakken. Today we take a look at the liquids infrastructure assets in this giant deal and provide a download of RBN’s maps of the infrastructure involved.

With increasing production near demand regions, better connectivity from both pipeline and rail, and export volumes that can be bid away from global markets, the U.S. propane industry is in a much better position to handle a “Perfect Storm” of extreme demand events than it was in the winter of 2013-14.  Nevertheless, today’s propane market brings with it a number of challenges, including greater exposure of domestic propane to global markets, more complex inter-regional supply dynamics,  a more diverse supply chain, all in the context of limited domestic demand growth. In today’s blog we conclude our analysis of the U.S. propane market.

The opening up of Mexico’s retail liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market could provide significant opportunities for U.S. propane and butane producers, as well as midstream companies and exporters. If exports of U.S.- sourced LPG are to increase, though, it would help to have a more robust and efficient system than presently exists for transporting the fuel to the U.S.-Mexico border and, from there, to key LPG consumption markets within Mexico. Today, we continue our look at Mexican LPG imports with a review of existing and planned pipelines.

The U.S. propane industry is evolving rapidly in response to increasing production and the resulting development of new market demand sectors in exports and PDH plants to make “on-purpose” propylene. Two years ago in the winter of 2013-2014 all the new production growth could not prevent a perfect storm of weather events from causing severe shortages and price distress for domestic customers in the Mid-Continent and East Coast regions. Today we describe how the propane market is now much better equipped to endure a similar spell of extreme demand.

Traditional domestic propane markets were dominated by seasonal consumer demand in the Northeast and Mid-Continent and petrochemical industry demand in the Gulf Coast region. Today domestic demand is still dominated by these two sectors although consumer use is declining slowly while new propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plants look set to boost chemical demand. Meantime the bounty of shale production has swamped domestic consumer needs – making exports by far the largest growth sector. Today we continue our deep dive review of the propane market.

Surging domestic propane production in PADD 1 (East Coast) and PADD 2 (Mid-Continent) over the past four years is unlikely to result in an increase in traditional consumer propane demand in those regions, even with today’s lower overall domestic propane prices.  Most propane use in those markets is from the residential and commercial sectors, and that demand has been in a slow, steady decline for years due to competition from electricity and natural gas, efficiency improvements and the general population shift to warmer states.   In fact, the only sector of the U.S. market expected to see an increase in propane demand in the next few years is for its use as a feedstock to produce petrochemicals.  Most petrochemical demand has traditionally been centered at the Gulf Coast but is projected to expand on the East Coast as well. Today we detail current and projected propane demand.

Surging production of natural gas liquids (NGLs) from the prolific Northeast Marcellus/Utica, the North Dakota Bakken and the Texas Permian and Eagle Ford basins over the past four years has transformed U.S. propane supply. More than half of that growth has come from the Northeast (PADD I) and the Mid-Continent (PADD II), which is particularly significant for the propane market since those two regions make up almost 80% of U.S. consumer propane demand.  That makes these two regions far more self-reliant than they were before the shale era. Today we look at RBN’s propane production outlook to 2025.

Most of the increase in U.S. propane production in recent years has come from plants processing natural gas to extract natural gas liquids (NGLs). The rich (wet) gas those plants process is either produced with crude as associated gas or from wet gas wells that target NGLs. In either case propane supplies are produced regardless of U.S. demand – and that demand is relatively static although subject to significant weather related seasonal variation. There are two important consequences of this supply/demand imbalance with important implications for the propane market.  First, the U.S. can produce about twice the propane it needs, so the surplus must be exported.  Second, most production growth is next door to the largest propane demand regions in the country. Today we describe the scenarios used to build our model of propane supply and demand used to analyze these developments.

Over the past two years, propane production has grown like crazy, and in several past blogs we’ve discussed the impact of those increased supplies on exports.  That has been a very big deal for propane markets. But an equally significant development is the location of that production growth.  Because much of the new propane supply is right next door to the two largest propane markets in the U.S. – the Northeast and the Midwest.  Considering what happened to the propane market during the Polar Vortex winter of 2013-14 (shortages and price spikes), the importance of production growth near to demand cannot be overstated.  It is very good news, both for the market in general and propane consumers in particular.  Today we start a new series examining what has happened to propane supply and what it means to propane markets.