Worth Re-Posting -- February 13, 2018 -- North Dakota Natural Gas Production Setting Records

Rigzone, Eni, and others are making a big deal about the big natural gas field found off-shore near Cyprus (Mediterranean Sea), where Eni says it will produce 2.9 Bcf of natural gas by the end of the year (2018). Don't get too excited: the Bakken, an oily play -- not a natural gas play -- already produces more natural gas than Eni does from the Zohr field. From an earlier post:

February 12, 2018: Turkish warships are impeding a rig from reaching a location of Cyprus where Italian energy company Eni is scheduled to drill for gas. -- from Twitter. Update from Reuters. Turkey is wearing out its "welcome" in the EU. Eni says it will produce 2.9 Bcf per day from Zohr field by second half of 2019. Compare that "2.9 Bcf" to the Bakken: from the last Director's Cut,

What was North Dakota's natural gas production in the most recent month, November, 2017? Yup, another all-time high: 2.1 billion cubic feet / day.

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Asian Demand For Natural Gas Surging

From Bloomberg:

Asia’s rapacious thirst for liquefied natural gas is sucking supplies from surprising places.

China to Japan and South Korea are paying top dollar for the super-chilled fuel. The pull is so strong that Norway’s Statoil ASA, which usually exports most of its LNG to Europe, is shipping a rare cargo east. It plans to send more.

Asia gets most of its LNG from Australia, including from the giant Gorgon project on the country’s northwest coast. Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia are also big suppliers.

Statoil’s tanker, the Arctic Aurora, due in South Korea this week shows how the LNG market is becoming global, with more cargoes traveling long distances from the Atlantic to the Pacific region as China leads a landmark shift to burning gas instead of coal. For Statoil, it’s a chance to squeeze a little more profit from its overall gas production that’s already near full capacity.

“What we’ve seen in Asia is strong prices,” said Peder Bjorland, Statoil’s head of natural gas. But “it doesn’t help to have strong prices if you don’t have the shipping capacity. It’s been difficult to get hold of spot vessels.”

The producer has in the past sent cargoes to Malaysia, China, India and Japan, but it mainly serves the markets in Europe and the Americas.