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US EIA to estimate 70-74 Bcf gas storage injection: survey

A consensus of analysts surveyed by Platts Wednesday expects the US Energy Information Administration on Thursday will estimate a natural gas storage injection of 70-74 Bcf for the reporting week that ended September 11. The EIA plans to announce its storage report at 10:30 am EST Thursday. An injection within expectations would be less than the 90-Bcf injection reported at this time in 2014 and comparable to the 75-Bcf five-year average injection, according to EIA data. Article continues below… Platts Natural Gas Alert provides global coverage of the major natural gas and LNG markets, including real-time spot market transactions reported as deals are done and key end-of-day crude and product assessments. The wider range of analysts’ expectations for this week was for a build of 66-77 Bcf. Last week, the EIA reported a 68-Bcf injection that increased inventories to 3.261 Tcf, which was 473 Bcf, or 17%, more than […]

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Eni sees larger European gas role

Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi hosted European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action Miguel Arias Canete to discuss European natural gas needs. Photo courtesy of Eni. ROME, Sept. 16 (UPI) — A natural gas discovery off the Egyptian coast and recent cooperation with Cyprus could translate to European energy security, Italian energy company Eni said. Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi hosted European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action Miguel Arias Canete in Rome to discuss regional energy issues. Descalzi said connecting regional markets and ensuring future supplies could help ensure European energy demands are met without interruption. "Eni’s super giant gas discovery offshore Egypt, along with other important discoveries made in recent years offshore Israel and Cyprus, will allow the East Mediterranean gas hub to contribute significantly to European energy security," the company said in a statement on the meeting. Descalzi met last week with Cypriot President […]

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America’s Shale Gas Supply Is Caught in its Longest-Ever Decline

America’s shale gas boom hasn’t exactly been booming lately. Natural gas production from the seven largest U.S. shale deposits will drop for a fourth straight month in October to average 44.784 billion cubic feet a day, the lowest since March, based on an Energy Information Administration forecast released Monday. That’s the longest streak of monthly declines in government data going back to 2007. The pullback follows a decade of surging gas production that created a glut of the heating fuel and sent prices plunging to record lows in some regions. The biggest declines forecast for October are in oil-rich deposits such as the Eagle Ford shale formation in Texas, where drillers are idling rigs in response to a collapse in crude prices. Pipeline constraints in Appalachia aren’t helping either. Yield from the Marcellus shale of the eastern U.S., the nation’s biggest gas field, will fall 0.5 percent, the EIA […]

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Low natgas prices, high utility stockpiles weigh on US railroad coal volumes: executives

With myriad headwinds driving down coal shipments this year, officials with Class 1 US railroads painted a dim picture of their coal business Wednesday while speaking at the Cowen and Company 8th Annual Global Transportation Conference in Boston. In presentations broadcast online, officials with CSX, Northern Southern, Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern and Genesee & Wyoming sited low natural gas prices, mild summer weather and high utility stockpiles as the primary causes for a drop in demand. Fredrik Eliasson, CSX’s chief sales and marketing officer, said the railroad will lose about $400 million in coal business this year compared with 2014 and by the end of this year about $1.3 billion of coal revenue will have "disappeared" over the last four years. "I think it’s more and more realistic to think that where we are from a coal perspective, we’re not going to go back to kind of the […]

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Cheap Russian Gas Tempts EU Buyers as LNG Import Growth Stalls

Europe lowered purchases of liquefied natural gas for a third month in August as buyers boosted purchases of oil-linked fuel through pipelines from Russia. LNG imports by 10 nations in the region that receive the tanker-delivered fuel dropped 3.4 percent from a year earlier in August, after reaching a two-year high in March, according to data from Genscape Inc. Russian pipeline supplies soared about 20 percent from a year earlier in August, remaining at the highest level this year, tracking declining crude prices, according to data from Gazprom PJSC, the world’s biggest gas producer. Europe, which imports as much as 70 percent of its gas needs, has increased shipments from Russia as contract prices declined because they follow crude with several months delay. Traders bought more LNG as they waited for pipeline gas prices to drop further in the third quarter, encouraged by a slump in Asian LNG prices […]

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Drillers Unleash ‘Super-Size’ Natural Gas Output

The U.S. may have even more—and much cheaper to get—supplies of natural gas than anyone imagined. The trick is applying supersize versions of the horizontal-drilling and fracking techniques that worked successfully elsewhere to an area that hasn’t seen this approach yet. The gains come from extending the lateral portions of wells by thousands of feet and pumping them full of enormous volumes of sand, chemicals and water to flush out more hydrocarbons. So far, the impressive results have been confined to a small area in a single Louisiana parish near the Texas border. But if the approach works across the giant Haynesville Shale, which spans 120 miles across both states, the era of low American gas prices could extend for decades into the future, experts say. “There’s a large likelihood that the United States will be enjoying very low gas prices for a very long time, maybe 20 years,” […]

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Maersk Gets Approval for $4.5 Billion U.K. North Sea Gas Field

A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S won U.K. approval for a $4.5 billion development plan for the Culzean natural gas field as the Danish company tries to ramp up output at its energy division. The field, located in the central part of the British area of the North Sea, is expected to produce enough natural gas to meet 5 percent of the U.K.’s total demand in 2020 or 2021, Maersk said in a statement on Monday. Maersk Oil will be the operator of the field with a 49.99 percent stake, while JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. has 34.01 percent and BP Plc 16 percent. Nils Smedegaard Andersen, chief executive officer of the Maersk group, said earlier this month the company is actively searching for North Sea oil acquisitions as the drop in energy prices makes takeovers attractive. The company wants to return focus to its North Sea waters, where it first […]

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US natural gas glut prompts price warning

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U.S. natural gas production waning

Federal U.S. report finds only one of seven shale natural gas basins are expected to post gains in overall short-term production. Photo by photostock77/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) — A drilling productivity report from the United States finds the Utica shale basin in Ohio is the only one of seven reviewed that’s expecting more production. The U.S. Energy Information Administration finds production from seven shale basins in the United States reached 45.6 billion cubic feet per day in May for an all-time high. That’s expected to drop 1.5 percent by September. The report finds net natural gas production from new wells drilled into U.S. shale reserves is not enough to counter the expected decline from legacy wells. EIA attributed that phenomenon to the decline in the number of drilling rigs deployed across the country. "Given the substantial drop in rig counts since the fourth quarter of 2014 in each […]

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EIA expects near-term decline in natural gas production in major shale regions

graph of monthly changes in natural gas production in DPR regions, as explained in the article text Natural gas production across all major shale regions in EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) is projected to decrease for the first time in September. Production from these seven shale regions reached a high in May at 45.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and is expected to decline to 44.9 Bcf/d in September. In each region, production from new wells is not large enough to offset production declines from existing, legacy wells. The DPR provides a month-ahead forecast of natural gas and crude oil production for the seven most significant shale formations in the United States. In order to estimate total natural gas production within a DPR region in a given month, production from both new wells and legacy wells must be taken into account. New-well production is estimated by multiplying estimated […]

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