| $52.66 | 1/23/2019 | 01/23/2018 | 01/23/2017 | 01/23/2016 | 01/23/2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 63 | 57 | 38 | 47 | 157 |
This is big.
Trump recognises Venezuela opposition leader Guaido as interim leader, says will use "full weight of US economic and diplomatic power" to pursue restoration of Venezuelan democracy.
Comment: you may remember Guaido from some years ago:
Comment: how long would it have taken a cautious politician to have made this decision. I think that another president might have made at least a dozen speeches on the situation and might have waited six months to a year to see how things played out before going bigley.
Next: sanctions on Venezuela. Do you think the White House is in contact with the CIA?
Chaos: for a White House that everyone says is so disorganized, it certainly seems to run "good enough."
SOTU: at the same time, the president has told he will keep the "contract." Pelosi invited him to give the SOTU address in early January; she did not specifically deny him from coming to Congress; she just recommended that due to safety concerns, he should not come to Congress. Trump says "a contract is a contract" and the "contract" was Pelosi's letter inviting him. Doesn't sound like a disorganized White House at all.
Disorganized? Same day as all this is happening, it's easy to forget that the first story of the day is that the White House has nominated 51 for judges. That story was the headline story earlier this morning; it's not even on the front page any more.
The planned closure of all nuclear reactors in Germany by 2022 means that Germany needs to retain half of its coal-fired power generation until 2030 to offset the nuclear phase-out.
Germany ordered the immediate shutdown of eight of its 17 reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and plans to phase out nuclear power plants by 2022.
The phasing out of all nuclear power in Germany means that Europe’s largest economy needs to keep half of its coal-fired generation for another decade and possibly extend the deadline for completely phasing out coal.
“No other country getting out of coal is also getting out of nuclear power,” [according to a spokesperson].Road-to-2020: there was a snippet somewhere today suggesting that Kamala Harris was filling her FTEs with Hillary staffers. If accurate that speaks volumes. Several factoids:
DACA’s end really started on September 5, 2017, when the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications for the program. From October to March, approximately 122 immigrants each day had their DACA-issued work permits expire because they were unable to apply in time for renewals.ISO New England: holding at $125/MWh.
After March 5, that number might be as high as hundreds of immigrants a day. Estimates from the Migration Policy Institute suggest that over the two years starting on March 5, 2018, an average of 915 work permits issued under DACA will expire daily. US Citizenship and Immigration Services data suggests that the pace will start slow, with 425 immigrants losing work permits daily in March, but will pick up aggressively a few months later.
But due to some recent court decisions, it might not end up being that many.
A pair of federal court orders — one issued in California in January, and one issued in New York in February — have slowed DACA’s unraveling by allowing DACA recipients to apply for two-year renewals again. As a result, it’s actually impossible to tell how many immigrants are losing work permits on March 6 — and how many will have new ones that last through March 2020 or later.
The spark spread is a common metric for estimating the profitability of natural gas-fired electric generators. The spark spread is the difference between the price received by a generator for electricity produced and the cost of the natural gas needed to produce that electricity. It is typically calculated using daily spot prices for natural gas and power at various regional trading points.
A limitation of the spark spread calculation is that it does not take into consideration other costs associated with the generation of electricity, such as pipeline costs or fuel-related finance charges, and other variable costs (like operations and maintenance costs), taxes, or fixed expenses. In that sense, a spark spread is an indicator of market conditions, but it is not necessarily an exact measure of profitability for any one specific generator.
| $53.44 | 1/23/2019 | 01/23/2018 | 01/23/2017 | 01/23/2016 | 01/23/2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 63 | 57 | 38 | 47 | 157 |
One of the biggest factors affecting the U.S. natural gas market in 2019 will undoubtedly be the dramatic rise in LNG export demand. The slate of liquefaction and LNG export capacity additions this year will boost U.S. demand for feedgas supply to nearly 9 Bcf/d by the end of the year, almost tripling the 2018 full-year average of 3.1 Bcf/d and close to doubling the December 2018 average of 4.6 Bcf/d, with the lion’s share of that growth happening along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. Three liquefaction trains — one each at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi terminals, as well as one at Cameron LNG — are likely to be fully operational in the first quarter, with five additional trains due in rapid progression later in 2019. That much new gas demand concentrated in one region is bound to disrupt physical flows and pricing dynamics. Today, we wrap up the series with a look at the timing and feedgas routes for the final two facilities: Freeport LNG in Texas and Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island project in Georgia.
This is Part 5 of our series detailing the LNG export capacity additions due online in 2019 and the feedgas pipeline capacity that’s lined up to serve them. Earlier, we looked at recent changes at the two operational terminals — Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass Liquefaction (SPL) and Dominion Energy’s Cove Point LNG facility in Maryland. SPL kicked off the 2019 LNG exports boom last fall when it began ramping up its fifth 4.5-MMtpa train, ahead of schedule. By December, SPL as a whole was taking more than 3.5 Bcf/d, with the help of a new feedgas delivery point via Kinder Morgan Louisiana Pipeline’s (KMLP) 600-MMcf/d Sabine Pass Expansion, which is fully contracted by Cheniere. Around that time, in mid-October, Cove Point LNG returned from a multi-week maintenance event and, with the in-service of upstream pipeline expansions — Williams/Transco’s Atlantic Sunrise and TransCanada/Columbia Gas Group’s WB Xpress — the 770 MMcf/d East Coast export facility began firing on all cylinders for the first time since it came online in early 2018. By late November, Cheniere’s Corpus Christi LNG (CCL) also began commissioning its first liquefaction train on the Texas Gulf Coast, also ahead of schedule, with Train 2 close on its heels.
Among these three facilities, feedgas flows ended 2018 above 5 Bcf/d, double where they started the year, near 2.5 Bcf/d. And SPL’s Train 5 and CCL’s Train 1 are just two out of a full eight new liquefaction trains due to be commercialized this year that will catapult U.S. feedgas demand for LNG exports to almost 9 Bcf/d by the end of 2019. That includes three new trains at Cameron LNG in Louisiana, the first of three trains at Freeport LNG near Freeport, TX, as well as the 10 mini-trains being developed at Elba Liquefaction in Georgia.
That much incremental demand growth in a relatively short span of time –– and mostly concentrated along the Gulf Coast –– is all but guaranteed to disrupt and reconfigure old gas flow patterns in the region. Recall that these LNG export projects need to line up three key commitments: 1) customer commitments for the train capacity (i.e. demand for LNG off-take); 2) supply contracts with gas producers to feed the trains, and 3) transportation capacity to get the gas there, including the capacity to move the gas those last few miles from the mainline delivery point to the terminal itself.
Most recently we examined the feedgas routes and pipeline projects lined up to deliver gas to Cameron LNG in Louisiana, where Train 1 is also gearing up to take feedgas this quarter.
Today, we conclude the series with a look at the timing and pipeline routes that will serve LNG production at the two other terminals that have plans to begin exporting this year: Freeport LNG and Elba Island LNG..