Random Update On Canadian Oil / Natural Gas Resources -- Rigzone -- November 28, 2018

Link here.

At around 4.5 million barrels per day (MMbpd), Canada is the world’s 5th largest oil producer. Some 75 percent of Canada’s production occurs in the western province of Alberta, having a massive deposit of heavier, harder-to-produce “oil sands.”

Canada has a nearly unlimited hydrocarbon resource, so importing oil nations around the world are increasingly seeking the country to supply resources. Canada’s biggest advantage may be its widening capacity to export. A slow growing population and mature energy demand market make incremental domestic needs rather low.

Currently, most of Canada’s petroleum production is exported, and almost all of that gets shipped south to the U.S. This overreliance on the U.S. market has become a problem for Canada because a shale revolution has meant surging U.S. oil production amid its flat demand. As such, Canada needs to find new growing markets for its domestic oil industry to flourish.

Canada’s natural goal is to reach Asia, responsible for about 70 percent of new oil demand in the world. Exporters are banking on cheaper transport. It takes a little over a week for a ship to reach Tokyo Bay from Vancouver, for instance, compared to nearly three weeks from the U.S. Gulf Coast.

*******************************

Gelato --  Main Street -- Grapevine, TX

**********************************

The Book Page

I'm in my "historical" Bible phase.

The books that are top shelf on this subject:

• The Book of J, translation by David Rosenberg, commentary by Harold Bloom
• The Bible: A Biography, Karen Armstrong, one of many entries;
• The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha, Fourth Edition;
• Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, Harold Bloom, c. 2005
• Where Shall Wisdom Be Found, Harold Bloom, c. 2005
• The Torah: The Five Books of Moses, the New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text

Color Me Confused -- Tea Leaves Suggest The Permian Is Struggling -- October 24, 2017 -- The Energy And Market Page, T+276

Before I get started, wow, I am in a great mood. It feels like a Monday. I had an NFL-free Monday night, completely forgot about it, and then thought that it would be on tonight. And it's not. Six free hours tonight. Wow. 

This never would have happened under the previous administration: utility costs going down! From InvestorVillage:

• utility rates doing down as much as 8% in the Pacific NW due to "glut" of natural gas

From the link above, this is of interest. Compare Canada and California with the US (not including California):

Confused. I have heard / read from multiple sources that the Permian was struggling. Today, there was more talk that US E&P operators would "soon" run out of "Tier 1" drilling locations which would cause problems for those in the Permian. And then, out of the blue, two companies focused on the Permian attracted the attention of CNBC mid-day:

• Alon -- now part of Delek
• Delek (DK)

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

***************************************

The Dow was up more 200 points at one point during the day.

NYSE, 191 new highs, including: BRK-B; Boeing; CAT; Polaris; RDS-B; Statoil;

• new lows, 46, including ATT (oh, my); Baker Huges a GE (BHGE) (oh, my); GE; Weatherford (WFT, oh, my)
• EW: down $7. Ouch.

********************************
Hess: Selling Assets

Link here; data points:

• will divest its subsidiary Hess Norge; sell statkes in Norway's Valhall and Hod fields: $2 billion
• will sell its offshore Equatorial Guinea: $650 million
• will sells its interests in Denmark's South Arne Field

*********************************

Making America Great

US midwest oil refiners boost output, cut region's dependence on Gulf Coast-- Reuters, data points:

• midwest refiners banking on North Dakota oilfields
• oil trade maps are being redrawn
• in 2016, Midwest refining capacity rose to almost 4 million bopd, the highest annual volume on record
• DAPL: made a huge difference
• ten years ago, Midwest refiners a million bopd short
• the Midwest will go from being short roughly 500,000 bpd of gasoline this year to a surplus of roughly 200,000 bpd by 2030
• but, low demand for refined products in Midwest could be a problem

Four Dots To Connect Regarding Natural Gas -- December 24, 2016

First dot: India's growing dependence on imported natural gas.

• natural gas: India did not import any natural gas until 2004
• India: 4th-largest importer of natural gas (behind Japan, South Korea, and China); 

Second dot: where does India get its imported natural gas (same link as above):

• mostly from long term contracts with Qatar

Third dot: what countries produce the most natural gas?

Fourth dot, an observation: US begins exports of shale gas to oil-rich UAE and Kuwait (previously posted at the blog).

As long as we have come this far in the blog, we might as well go one step further. The EIA recently pointed out that Canada was the fifth-largest producer of dry natural gas (I have no idea why that deserved a special tweet, but I'm glad it did).

The US now has a president that is pro-growth, and a global-warming skeptic.

Canada, meanwhile, has another Obama in office: anti-growth and a strong believer in global-warming.

One wonders how George Soros will be playing the US-Canadian currency market? It seems to be an open-book test.

****************************

The Apple Page

This feature has been around "forever," but it has only been in the last couple of weeks have I discovered how incredibly useful it is. But, regardless of the usefulness, I am blown away by the fact that "it works."

I'm taking about single-finger use of the Apple track pad; the two-finger-swipe of the track pad; and, the three-finger swipe of the track pad. There's actually also a four-finger swipe of the track pad, but it's identical to the single-finger touch.

Sophia, our 2.5-y/o granddaughter taught the various swipes to me. I did not know how she was effortlessly getting from one screen to another.

The single-finger use simply moves the arrow-icon from one point to another point on the page.

The two-finger sweep moves the entire page around, which is very, very useful when the content of the page extends beyond the borders of the browser.

The three-finger sweep moves the entire screen from desktop to another desktop. For those without multiple monitors (which is most of us 24/7 and all of us when traveling) this quick three-finger sweep is very, very useful.

One doesn't really need these additional two-finger and three-finger swipes all that much, but when called for, they are really nice to have. In fact, without them, I'm not sure how else one can accomplish the same thing in a different way. 

Until recently, I did not know how Sophia, 2 1/2 years old was navigating through all my files.

Speaking of which, Sophia has, more than once, re-set the "settings" on her grandmother's smart phone to the point that my wife is unable to use her Apple phone. She has to have our 10-year-old Olivia get back "into" the phone and re-set everything back to default or back to how May had her phone working in the first place.

Better Late, Than Never -- December 21, 2016

I remember when Qatar was the BIG name in natural gas.

This was from the EIA today via Twitter. This is 2014 data. Apparently "they" are still collecting 2015 data.

US Will Increase Natural Gas Exports To Canada -- Huge Story; OIl Drilling Technology -- March 13, 2016

From Rigzone:

A Calgary-based company is demonstrating a prototype of its new, proprietary robotic racking board pipe handler for land-based drilling rigs. SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robotic Arm) – designed to improve safety and efficiency by replacing the derrick men who work at the top of the drilling rig – can move a triple pipe stand in less than 25 seconds, according to RigArm Inc.’s website.

****************************

US Natural Gas To Canada

From Bloomberg:

U.S. gas drillers battered by the lowest prices in 17 years have found another release valve for their output: Canada.

Over the past five years, the shale boom that unlocked vast supplies of natural gas across North America has tripled pipeline shipments from the U.S. to Mexico, and spurred the first seaborne exports from the lower 48 states. Now, pipeline companies led by Spectra Energy Corp., TransCanada Corp. and Energy Transfer Partners LP are gearing up to more than double the flow into Canada by 2027.

The push begins next year, with plans to open or expand at least three major pipelines and reverse the flow northward on a fourth. Meanwhile, TransCanada may be going a step further, engaging in acquisition talks with Columbia Pipeline Group Inc., a company with a direct route into the U.S.’s prolific Marcellus shale play. The efforts come as gas stockpiles have reached historic highs, prices have fallen almost 40 percent since the end of 2011 and the fuel has established itself as the Bloomberg Commodity Index’s worst performer. All of that has spurred a desperate drive by drillers to expand their markets.

“There’s so much supply growth in the eastern U.S. that producers are seeking any and all outlets to get the gas to market,” Martin King, an analyst at FirstEnergy Capital Corp. in Calgary, said in a phone interview. “It’s another obstacle for Canadian producers.”

Home-grown Canadian drillers such as Calgary-based Birchcliff Energy Ltd. and Encana Corp., are already feeling the heat. Nine years ago, supplies piped from Canada met 16 percent of U.S. demand for natural gas.

By 2014, as U.S. output rose to a record for a fourth straight year, Canadian supplies had slipped under 10 percent. Some Canadian producers will hurt more than others. Those who keep their costs down and sell to markets that don’t vie with supplies from the eastern U.S. will remain competitive, said Jeff Tonken, Birchcliff’s chief executive officer. Meanwhile Encana, one of Canada’s largest gas producers, has said it was cutting spending this year by 55 percent amid the slide in oil and gas prices. The company is also reducing its workforce another 20 percent, which means that Encana will have more than halved its number of employees and contractors since 2013.

I wonder if Trudeau spoke about these issues when he met with President Obama?

TransCanada To Build New Export Facility To Deliver Natural Gas To Malaysia; Keystone XL Killed But The Beat Goes On

Updates

June 14, 2017: TransCanada moves ahead with $2-billion NGTL system expansion. Data points from Oil & Gas Journal:

• NOVA Gas Transmission Line (NGTL)
• $2 billion expansion; adding to the system's current %5.1 billion near-term capital program
• in the aggregate: 273 km of pipeline; 150 MW of compression at five compressor stations, new meter stations
• construction expected to start in early 2019
• initial projects to be in service in 4Q19
• expansion needed due to growing producer demand to link Montney, Duvenay, and Deep basin production to the NGTL system and move to intra-basin and export markets
• the 24,012-km NGTL system gathers 75% of Western Canada Sedimentary Basin gas production in Alberta and northeastern British Columbia 

Original Post

Reuters is reporting, but it looks like a standard press release from the company:

TransCanada Corp said on Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Malaysian-owned Progress Energy to transport two billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to underpin the $1.5 billion extension of its NGTL pipeline system in British Columbia.

The extension will also include an interconnection with TransCanada's planned Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project, which will supply natural gas to a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Prince Rupert, BC.

Malaysia's Petronas acquired Progress Energy in a $4.9 billion deal last year. Petronas has applied to Canada's National Energy Board for a license to export nearly 20 million tonnes of LNG a year from the West Coast.

The 305 kilometre (189 mile) pipeline extension, called the North Montney Mainline, will reach the export delivery facilities in 2019, pending regulatory approvals.

The Keystone XL may have been killed, but the TransCanada beat still goes on. Good for them.

The Beat Goes On, Sonny and Cher