The Perryville Hub -- RBN Energy -- November 16, 2016

Ben Carson: say what? It's being reported that Ben Carson turned down a job in Donald Trump's cabinet, saying that "the last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency."

A close friend said that "Dr Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency."

And this guy was running for president? Say what?

Boeing moves, link here, data points:

• moves will effect about 2,500 positions, cut 500 jobs, and close two facilities by end of 202
• Huntington Beach, CA: 1,600 positions move to other CA sites -- El Segundo, Long Beach, and Seal Beach; 500 positions will move to St Louis, MO; 400 will move to Huntsville, AL
• El Paso, TX, facility will close (290 folks)
• Newington, VA, facility will close (70 folks)
• Huntington Beach facility will stay open, but unknown how many employees will remain
• an unspecified number of jobs will move from Kent, WA, to Tukwila, WA, sixteen miles away
• Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Seal Beach are all near each other along the coast (the "beach" designation probably gives that away)
• El Segundo is a long, long way from Huntington Beach

Target boosts forecasts. Profit rises to $608 million on strong back-to-school performance. Target is soaring after demolishing earnings.

This will slow things down: industry groups file lawsuit over BLM methane emissions rule. 

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Back to the Bakken

Two huge stories -- must-read stories today -- will be posted within a few minutes in a separate post. 

Active rigs:

	11/16/2016	11/16/2015	11/16/2014	11/16/2013	11/16/2012
Active Rigs	39	63	186	183	187

RBN Energy: the pivotal role of the Perryville Hub in transforming US natural gas flows.

Natural gas pipeline takeaway projects under development out of the U.S. Northeast would enable ~10 Bcf/d to flow south from the Marcellus/Utica supply area. About half of that southbound capacity is geared to serve growing power generation demand directly south and east via the Mid-Atlantic states. But another nearly 5.0 Bcf/d is headed southwest to the Louisiana and Texas Gulf Coast for growing LNG export and Mexico demand—and that is on top of about 4.4 Bcf/d of reversal (or backhaul) capacity already added over the past two years. Much of the Gulf Coast-bound backhaul capacity will converge on the Perryville Hub, a market center located in northeastern Louisiana, about 220 miles north of the U.S. national benchmark Henry Hub. As such, the ability for gas to move through Perryville and get to downstream demand market centers will be key to balancing the natural gas markets. Today, we take a closer look at the historical and future pipeline capacity in and around the Perryville Hub.

The Perryville Hub pricing location has long been a pulse-point for gas flows through the Gulf Coast region, although arguably an under-appreciated one, given that it sits in the shadows of Henry Hub.

One of the touchstones of a successful trading hub is optionality, and Perryville has no shortage of that. For one, it is a highly connected, high-capacity hub. For another, its location gives it just about 360-degree access to supply regions. Much like Henry Hub, the Perryville pricing hub is not a hub-and-spoke system in the classic sense. Rather it is a collection of pipeline interconnects starting in Ouachita Parish, LA and extending as far east as Madison Parish, LA, but for the most part the supply converges at two major nodes: around Perryville, LA, on the western side of the hub and near Delhi, LA, on the eastern side. The multitude of interconnects allow gas to hop from one pipeline to the other on its way from supply to demand market areas, changing direction along the way if need be. Unlike Henry Hub, which also boasts ample throughput capacity, Perryville historically has seen high utilization of its interconnect capacity but low trading liquidity (as opposed to Henry Hub’s low physical flow utilization and high liquidity—at least in the futures market). In other words, although a large volume of gas physically moves through Perryville, comparatively little of that gas changes hands at the hub.