Established LNG project operator Chevron bought out two minority stakeholders in the Kitimat LNG export project located in British Columbia, Canada in a deal announced on Christmas Eve.
Chevron’s financial strength, LNG operational experience and marketing expertise could help the project reach important sales and purchase offtake agreements with buyers. Keep reading →
One thing all commodity price forecasts have in common is they tend to be very poor at predicting what prices will be in the future, despite this being ostensibly their sole purpose. Many forecasts are based on past market activity, but this has not proven to be terribly effective at divining future price movements.
In this video from the US Association for Energy Economics conference recently held in Austin, Texas, Roger Stibolt, Managing Director at investment banking house Galway Group discusses some of the ways he approaches natural gas trading and price forecasting. Keep reading →
What’s the best way to analyze future natural gas price scenarios? Banks and hedge funds spend enormous amounts of time and money attempting to answer that question and there is no shortage of views on the subject.
In this video from the US Association of Energy Economics conference recently held in Austin, Texas, Robert Stibolt, Managing Director of the Galway Group – an investment banking firm – discusses five ways to obtain information about future natural gas prices and market fundamentals. Keep reading →
The uncomfortable relationship between Russia and its biggest natural gas market – Europe – has been undergoing changes as European countries contemplate developing their indigenous shale gas resources and the divergence between oil and natural gas prices that has in turn strained the long held practice of oil-linked gas pricing outside of North America.
In this video from the recent US Association for Energy Economics conference Ariel Cohen, Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow discusses some of the emerging regional trends that are shaping future gas flow patterns and Russia’s role as gas supplier. Keep reading →
Many analysts and energy industry observers did not anticipate the impact unconventional gas and oil produced from tight deposits like shale would have on the industry. Technology and market fundamentals aligned to open vast reserves and facilitate production increases that caught many by surprise and are having wide ranging effects throughout the energy business and beyond.
This video from the recent US Association of Energy Economics conference features natural gas market experts discussing the shale gas phenomenon and what it means for everything from trading strategies to Russian production and export planning. Keep reading →
West Texas Intermediate opened a bit higher this morning, popping north of $88.00 a barrel, while Brent jumped higher to $109.67 and Nymex natural gas started the day at $3.31/mmBtu.
This time of year fuel prices are usually a mix of short-term weather-driven trading while the broader sector looks at forecasts for capital spending in 2013 (see one bank’s estimate of the global oil sector’s outlook here). Granular company level guidance for the coming year won’t arrive in a meaningful way until full year 2012 results come out at the end of next month, but in the meantime conference meeting rooms will be filled with rumors and chatter about how those big budgets are getting set. Keep reading →
It is an urban myth that if the oil industry drilled more, gasoline prices would decrease. The myth relies on the premise that as more oil supplies are introduced, market forces would take over and domestic prices would fall. But it turns out that increasing domestic production has virtually no effect on gasoline prices.
The US already increased production. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), US oil production reached 310,403,000 barrels per month in October 1970 that became the historic peak. Ever since that time, production changed course and it has been in a steady decline. By 2005, production sank more than 50 percent to approximately 150,000,000 barrels per month. The bottom was reached in September 2008 when production sank to 119,477,000 barrels per month. Since then, for the first time since the 1980’s, monthly production changed direction and it has been trending upward. Last July, the US touched a new record of 196,405,000 barrels per month, a production level the US has not witnessed for over a decade. Keep reading →
US oil prices could sink to $50 a barrel at some point over the next two years, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
But don’t expect a corresponding drop in gas prices.
Merrill analysts expect US oil prices to still average about $90 a barrel over the same time period. Global oil prices meanwhile, which more closely dictate the price of gasoline in the United States, are expected to remain high as growth in global oil supplies lags population growth and economic output.
Keep reading →While supply of energy commodities can often seem arcane, only noticeable to end consumers when prices rise or there is a supply disruption, demand is much more tactile and visible.
“Everyone wants to use as much plastic as we do,” notes Williams Energy senior executive David Darcey on this video shot at a recent summit of the US Association of Energy Economics, detailing rising US production of plastics, innovations in making steel using natural gas and heating oil conversions as parts of the puzzle in creating a rising market for natural gas production currently weighing on prices. Keep reading →
The refineries along the US East Coast sit close to some of the globe’s largest energy demand centers, but face such high prices for the crude they process that many have struggled to make money. Many import crude oil from Africa and the Middle East, and have been cut off from cheaper supply recently surging out of the middle and west of North America by limits on transportation infrastructure.
Companies like Enbridge, which presented recently at the US Association for Energy Economics, are seeking solutions to a bottleneck that is preventing lower-priced crude from competing on global or even national markets. Much oil currently travels by rail, as we’ve noted on Breaking Energy before, and may increasingly go multi-modal, from pipelines into rail cars and vice versa as it wends its way to energy-hungry Eastern US and Eastern Canadian markets. Keep reading →
