Hope springs eternal: Keystone XL inches forward. Bloomberg.
An order issued by a Montana judge barring certain pre-construction activities was dissolved on Monday, according to the Canadian company. That followed a June ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a new presidential permit negated challenges to the project’s earlier approval, TC Energy said Thursday in its second-quarter earnings statement.
The victory is only a partial win for TC Energy and the Keystone XL project, which would ship more crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. TC Energy said in May it was already too late to start major construction activity this year.
The project also still faces a legal challenge in Nebraska, and a decision on that matter is due this quarter.Permian light: making its way to "oil-starved" buyers in Asia -- Bloomberg. This is that new grade of American light crude oil we've been hearing so much about: West Texas Light crude, yields a high proportion of naphtha and other distillates when processed with low levels of impurities like sulfur (that's why it's called "sweet").
- SK operators looking for something to replace Iranian oil and an ultra-light oil known as condensate
- SK has been the worst hit due to a halt in Iranian South Pars flows
- West Texas Light: makes up 20% of production in the Permian
- API gravity of 45 - 50
- lighter than the more-often exported WTI Midland crude with an API gravity of 38 - 42
- much more at the link
- may get a stand-alone post
- big story
- Ecopetrol? Colombia-based
- JV to develop almost 100,000 net acres of Occidental-owned Midland Basin properties in West Texas
- Ecopetrol to pay $750 million in cash at closing and $750 million of carried capital
- Ecopetrol with 49% interest in JV
- Ecopetrol will be able to book 160 million boe of proved undeveloped reserves at closing
- should progressively increase production until 2027
- should reach 95,000 boepd
- let's see, $750 x 4 = $3 billion / 97,000 net acres = about $30,000 / acre
EVs: JD Powers. Link here.
Offshore: Shell has taken final investment decision for the PowerNap deepwater project in the US GOM. Link here. PowerNap:
- a subsea tie-back to Shell-operated Olympus production hub;
- expected to start production in late 2021;
- to produce 35,000 boe at peak rate;
- a forward-looking break-even price of less than $35/bbl; and,
- currently estimated to contain more than 85 million boe
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Back to the Bakken
No wells coming off the confidential list today.
Active rigs:
| $55.25 | 8/2/2019 | 08/02/2018 | 08/02/2017 | 08/02/2016 | 08/02/2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 58 | 63 | 59 | 34 | 74 |
RBN Energy: prospects for natural gas demand in western Canada, part 3.
Growing natural gas supplies in Western Canada have been pressuring gas prices and export pipelines in the region, but there are signs that at least some of that supply-growth pressure is being offset by rising gas demand. Though the region is pegged as primarily a winter gas market — where local demand only rises when the temperature falls into the winter extremes — non-weather-related demand for natural gas has been growing in Western Canada and looks to have further upside in the years ahead. Today, we delve into Alberta and British Columbia’s gas demand trends and their potential to help balance the region’s oversupply conditions.
Today’s blog is the third in our series examining the natural gas balance in Western Canada and how this region has been coping with the intense — and still growing — competition from expanding natural gas supplies in the U.S.
In part 1, we began with an overview of supply and demand factors affecting gas prices at AECO, Western Canada’s benchmark hub. In short, the growth in gas supplies there has pushed the existing pipeline delivery network in the region to its limit, creating a situation of too much supply pushing on too little pipeline export capacity. And that supply growth has continued even as natural gas prices have weakened in the past few years.
In part 2, we looked at the specific drivers behind the rising natural gas supplies in Western Canada, and concluded that despite low gas prices, producers have squeaked through by reducing costs and consolidating development in the most economically attractive corridors of the Montney, Duvernay and other unconventional plays. That’s also meant focusing drilling activity in crude oil and NGL-rich areas. That helps boost producers’ margins but yields significant volumes of associated natural gas as a by-product — to the point of leaving the region oversupplied and takeaway-constrained on the gas side, and with historically low — even negative — gas prices.
Hmm...
ReplyDeleteAsian buyers requesting US extralight crude. How does this compare with the earlier RigZone article (based on a fluffy but slick UH white paper) that said oh...some SOKOReans had an issue with some cargoes?
Just one more example to take everything with a grain of salt. Can't react to isolated anecdotes. Have to have some statistics, numbers, etc. That or at least read multiple articles and get a gestalt.
This article does say that the South Koreans did have problems with contamination found in some light oil cargoes, but that has since been resolved. But point well taken.
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