Wow, It Never Quits -- LNG, LNG, LNG, And More LNG; Making Panama Great Again -- June 27, 2018

Articles sent to me by readers. Thank you very much.

The first article, a press release: ONEOK will expand its natural gas pipeline infrastructure in the Permian Basin and Oklahoma to a total of 1.7 billion cubic feet per day. The press release goes on to list several projects.

• 1.7 billion cubic feet per day / 6,001 = 285,000 boe per day
• these are the projects
• expansion: 150 million cf/d expansion, ONEOK's WesTex Transmission system, from the Permian Basin to delivery points in the Texas panhandle; if enough interest, could be expanded to 450 million cf/d; 4Q18;
• expansion: 150 million cf/d expansion of the ONEOK Gas Transportation system from two NG processing plants in the STACK and SCOOP to eastern Oklahoma to join the interstate grid; 1Q19;
• expansion: 100 million cf/d westbound expansion of the same system; 1Q19;
• new: a project to make the Roadrunner Gas Transmission bidirectional; will supply 750 million cf/d of eastbound transportation capacity from the Delaware Basin to the Waha area; 1Q19;
• most of this will be done with additional compression facilities
• look how fast this will occur: we'll talk about this later when we talk about Canada

The second article, SFGate: Panama Canal opens way for more LNG tankers with US exports rising. But first, before we get to this story, do you remember the negative article by The NYT suggesting the Panamanians would not succeed with their Panama Canal project? The "Panama Canal expansion" tag will bring up The NYT article plus many related articles. The original post regarding The NYT article and updates are at this post.

Now back to the SFGate article, data points:

• the Panama Canal Authority will ramp up the movement of massive LNG tankers through the canal beginning in October of this year (2018)
• under new rules:
• the ships can traverse the canal at night
• two at a time can be on Gatun Lake
• the changes will let two tankers move through the canal in different directions at the same time
• the authority will also better identify "ghost bookings": companies that reserve slots in advance, then fail to show up

Other data points:

• the US currently has two operating LNG export terminals; there will be four (4) more export terminals in 2020
• China is now the world's largest natural gas importer
• China is not putting any tariffs on natural gas imports

And more:

• the canal celebrated it's second anniversary of the expansion yesterday (Tuesday, June 26, 2018)
• so far: 
• 372 LNG tankers have gone through the locks; 
• 337 moved through on the same day they had reserved a slot; 
• the remaining ships were tankers that showed up with no reservation, and all but five moved through on the same day; 
• the rest waited three to four days at most
• the canal is averaging less than a trip a day for these tankers
• in October, a second daily slot will become available
• the canal has a total of 10 slots per day available for reservations
• a new analysis suggest the locks may be able to handle as many as 13 a day

Making Panama great again. Doing it on their own. Can you imagine the additional revenue this country will begin to take in after October?