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Monday, August 29, 2016

Another Pipeline Project Abandoned; Power Surge In Texas -- WSJ -- August 29, 2016

Best clip of the day! From MSNBC

From Reuters: Truck carrying Takata air bag inflators explodes in U.S., killing one. No link; by the end of the day, the story will be everywhere -- for all I know it will be the lead story on ABC News with David Muir tonight.

Exxon Mobil backs out of Alaska LNG project. From The Wall Street Journal.
Exxon Mobil has decided not to invest in the next stage of a proposed natural gas export terminal in Alaska and said it would work with its partners to sell its interest in the project to the state government.
The company’s decision comes amid a global glut of natural gas that has depressed prices and follows the release of a Wood McKenzie report earlier this week concluding the Alaskan project “is one of the least competitive” of proposed liquefied natural gas plants worldwide.
A spokesman for Exxon said Friday that the company will no longer invest in the proposal, which is “transitioning to a state project.” Exxon owns about one-third of the project, according to the state.
Last November, the Alaskan government paid $65 million for TransCanada Corp. ’s 25% stake in the project, known as Alaska LNG, which is expected to cost between $45 billion and $65 billion.
It has yet to be approved for construction and wouldn’t start commercial shipments before 2023, according to filings by its corporate backers. The other backers, BP PLC and ConocoPhillips, each hold roughly 20% stakes and have signaled that they, too, could pull out.
Power surge in Texas. From The WSJ today:
A startling energy bonanza has gone almost unnoticed in Texas: the rise of renewables. The Lone Star state has added more wind-based generating capacity than any other, with wind turbines accounting for 16% of electrical generating capacity as of April, and is anticipating a huge surge in solar power. We report that at a time when debate is raging between political parties over climate change, and critics charge that “green energy” is little more than a government creation, Texas has taken an approach that works within the state’s free-market-based electricity system. And state officials say wind and solar are almost certain to play a significant and growing role in the state’s energy future even when federal subsidies decline in coming years.
Renewable energy in Texas. From The WSJ today.

EVs will be here faster than "we" think. From The WSJ today.

Death spiral: as many as one-third of US counties may have one ObamaCare option. Now it's all about monopolies. From The WSJ. One has to ask the question: if more and more folks opt out of ObamaCare will that improve the economy? Imagine what families could do with an extra $2,000/month in their wallets.

How good is Tony Romo? He has won one -- that's right, one -- play-off game. From talk radio, Ft Worth. 

And now for another perspective: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the "law of Christendom." From Indian Country, TodayMediaNetwork. com.

The news not being reported: when you add up Trump's numbers (44%) and Hillary's numbers (44%) one gets ... let's see ... 88%. That leave 12% voting for someone else (or not voting). My hunch: that 12% is not going to be split down the middle between Trump and Hillary.

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Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:


8/29/201608/29/201508/29/201408/29/201308/29/2012
Active Rigs3076194183190

RBN Energy: the series continues -- too much pipeline in the Marcellus / Utica?
Of all the demand markets in the U.S., the biggest prize eyed by Marcellus/Utica natural gas producers is the Gulf Coast region, where a combination of industrial demand, LNG exports and power generation projects is driving a need for more and more gas. And beyond the U.S. Gulf Coast states, there lies still another market capable of gobbling up even more of the excess Northeast gas supply: Mexico’s rapidly growing gas-fired generation sector ––that is, assuming pipelines in Texas can get it all the way there. There is over 4.0 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica-to-Gulf-Coast takeaway capacity planned to be completed over the next few years. Today, we look at the status and timing of Northeast pipeline takeaway projects targeting the Gulf Coast.
With the Northeast producing region hoping for access to close to 18 Bcf/d of incremental takeaway capacity over the next several years, the question now becomes, will there be too much takeaway capacity out of the Northeast?
To answer this, we first looked at the RBN Northeast production outlook and prospects for supply growth under three commodity-price scenarios, concluding that efficiency gains and the uncompleted well inventory (DUCs) indicate that even the low production case will lead to at least some supply growth in the region. With that in mind, we turned our attention to upcoming takeaway capacity projects, organized into five outbound flow corridors that we defined for our analysis. Of the 24 projects RBN is tracking in our Midstream Infrastructure Database Interface (MIDI), six projects totaling 3.3 Bcf/d are headed to the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, or along what we call the East corridor; two projects adding up to 0.65 Bcf/d are planned for the Canadian corridor and four projects totaling 4.3 Bcf/d to the Midwest via Ohio ;and  four projects with a combined 5.2 Bcf/d to the Southeast along the Atlantic Coast are under development.  
We also started our examination of what some of this new gas supply will do to natural gas markets along the Gulf Coas. 
Today, we look at each of the projects that will flow Marcellus/Utica gas along the fifth and final corridor — the Gulf Coast via Ohio, aka the Promised Land of future natural gas demand.
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The Market

Closing: it looks like the market closed up about 100 points. NYSE --
  • new highs: 201
  • new lows: 11
Mid-day trading: wow, up 120 points. How quickly the Fed became irrelevant. The Dow 30 is near its 52-week high, which would be another all-time high. NYSE:
  • new highs: 157; BRK-B (a huge whoop);
  • new lows: 10;
Opening: so much for Janet Yellen's speech last Friday. The market surges 81 points on opening.  Late morning, the market (Dow 30) was up over 100 points. BRK-B surged to a new all-time high, flirting with $150. A big whoop. XLNX also continues to move up about one-half percent. NYSE:
  • new highs: 134;
  • new lows: 10;
Futures: not as bad as overnight reports suggested.

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