Natural Gas Demands Starting to Exceed Infrastructure

Link here. This link will probably break soon; it's a great article. The headline emphasizes natural gas, but there's a lot about crude oil and other wet gases, and the Bakken is mentioned.

An average $8.2 billion/year will have to be spent by 2035 for the US and Canada to accommodate new natural gas supplies, particularly from prolific shale plays, and meet growing demand, a study commissioned by the INGAA Foundation concluded.

Some $205.2 billion will be needed for mainlines, laterals, processing, storage, compression, and gathering lines, it indicated.

The study by ICF International updated one in October 2009 for the foundation, which is associated with the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. Santa, also INGAA president, said the update came after less than 2 years, instead of the usual 4, because the North American gas supply situation has changed so dramatically as more gas is recovered from previously inaccessible tight shale formations.

In addition:

There also will be demand for pipeline capacity to transport or process NGLs recovered from wet gas produced from many shale formations, noted Harry Vidas, an ICF upstream supply and economics specialist who wrote the report’s section on anticipated NGLs and crude oil needs. “The expenditures are going to be quite large,” he said. “Almost all of the plays have wet components which have to be removed and sold before the gas is dry enough to put into a pipeline.”

And with regard to pipelines for crude oil:

Vidas said as Alaskan oil production declines, US West Coast refineries will need to get crude feedstock elsewhere and likely will turn to crude recovered from Alberta’s oil sands, shipped by pipeline to a British Columbia port, and loaded onto tankers bound for refineries in California and Washington. New crude production from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in North Dakota and Montana, and the Niobrara shale in the Denver, Powder River, and Green River Basins of Wyoming and Colorado also will support demand for another 5 million b/d of crude pipeline capacity by 2035, he said.