Friday, August 28, 2015

Is the decision / announcement finally coming next week? There are rumors that President Obama will make it official next week, before the Labor Day weekend, that he will deny a permit for the Keystone Pipeline. If so, it looks like he's milked that story for all the campaign funds he felt he was going to get. 

Bloomberg is reporting:

If there was any question over whether this year’s oil crash would give rise to a new era of energy megadeals, there isn’t anymore.

Schlumberger Ltd.’s proposed purchase of gear maker Cameron International Corp. for about $15 billion helped make the last 12 months the most active in decades for global energy mergers.

Three of the last five quarters have exceeded $160 billion in deal volume, surpassing even the late 1990s, a period when many of the world’s largest energy corporations were formed.

Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and Total SA all expanded by absorbing smaller rivals towards the turn of the century, becoming what some now call the "supermajors." U.S. crude averaged about $21 a barrel from 1998 to 2000, bottoming out in December 1998 near $10. Adjusted for today’s dollars, the fourth quarter that year saw about $157 billion in deals including the combination of Exxon and Mobil. In the second quarter of this year, there were about $258 billion in global energy deals announced.

Active rigs:

	8/28/2015	08/28/2014	08/28/2013	08/28/2012	08/28/2011
Active Rigs	76	195	181	191	199

RBN Energy: update on moving US LPG to Mexico. (Archived.)

There are four ways for U.S. sourced LPG to reach Mexico: by ship, by pipeline, by rail or by truck. Given all the expansions at U.S. export terminals, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of the LPG being exported from the U.S. to Mexico is moved by ship, or that the future of U.S. LPG sales to Mexican distributors will likely involve bigger vessels (armadas of which are now being built).

The largest U.S. export facility is the Enterprise LPG export terminal on the Houston Ship Channel; the facility, whose current loading capacity is 300 Mb/d (or 9 MMb/month), was running flat-out, until the new ETP/Sunoco Nederland terminal came online.  Now volumes are down slightly, but will probably be coming back up soon.  Later this year  its capacity will increase to more than 500 Mb/d (just over 16 MMb/month).

The second largest U.S. export dock is owned by Targa, that can export up to about 240 Mb/d of propane and/or butane (7 MMb/month) from its recently expanded Galena Park Marine Terminal, also near Houston, and third largest Sunoco’s new Nederland, TX export terminal (an element of its larger Mariner South project) can handle up to 200 Mb/d (6 MMb/month).  

The newest entry in the Gulf Coast race to export is Occidental Petroleum’s new Ingleside LPG export terminal (near Corpus Christi), which when fully operational will be capable of loading up to 100 Mb/d, and then in the second half of 2016 Phillips 66 hopes to start up a new, 145 Mb/d export terminal in Freeport, TX.

There are LPG exports in the works on the U.S. West Coast. Petrogas Energy owns and operates an LPG export terminal in Ferndale, WA that is capable of handling up to 30 Mb/d, but two other proposed LPG export projects have hit major snags and may need to be re-sited. In March 2015, the plan by Sage Midstream’s Haven Energy Terminals subsidiary to build a 47 Mb/d export facility in Longview, WA, was rejected by port officials, and in May 2015 the mayor of Portland, OR withdrew his support for Pembina Pipelines’ plan for a 37.5 Mb/d terminal there. (Yet another project was unveiled on July 30, 2015; AltaGas said it’s considering a possible LPG export facility in British Columbia whose initial phase could handle up to 25 Mb/d.)