Only One Well Coming Off The Confidential List; WTI Struggling -- April 5, 2019

Only one well coming off confidential list today -- Friday, April 5, 2019: 20 wells for the month; 20 wells for the quarter

• 35211, SI/NC, XTO, Teddy Federal 12X-5H, North Fork, no production data,

Active rigs:

$62.19	4/5/2019	04/05/2018	04/05/2017	04/05/2016	04/05/2015
Active Rigs	62	58	49	29	94

RBN Energy: new plans to bring more gas to New England and the Maritimes, part 3. This should be interesting.

The shutdown of natural gas production from the Sable Offshore Energy Project on Canada’s East Coast as of January 1, 2019, increased the Canadian Maritimes’ reliance on gas exports from New England this winter as consumers worked to link up with fresh supply to replace SOEP. The tightening supply in the region has prompted expansion plans from TransCanada to move more Western Canadian and Marcellus/Utica gas to New England utilizing its Mainline and other eastern systems. Today, we conclude our series examining the potential impacts of SOEP’s demise by examining new plans to bring more gas to the region. 

These plans involve increasing capacity on existing pipelines that link the New England market to Canada from the north, whereas pipeline expansions that have been attempting to bring Marcellus/Utica gas more directly from the south and west continue to face strong environmental and regulatory resistance. Before explaining these incremental developments from the north, let’s review the first two blogs in this series.

Previously,  we reviewed the shutdown of SOEP on New Year’s Day 2019. Originally intended as a stepping stone to a much larger offshore gas supply presence, SOEP and its little brother, Deep Panuke, eventually went into terminal decline, and with no further commercial discoveries of natural gas reserves in the region, water encroachment, economics and declines sealed their fates. The end of this supply has had two major implications. The first is that the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which were already fairly isolated in terms of gas supply, now only have two remaining supply options: piped imports from the U.S. and LNG imports. The second implication is that New England, which itself lacks sufficient pipeline connectivity, will increasingly be competing with Eastern Canada for supply, particularly in the winter months, when demand is highest.