United States: Gas prices plunge to the lowest levels in 30 years

Gas prices in the United States plunged to the lowest levels in 30 years signaling to dial back new well drilling and maximize combustion by power producers.

Front-month futures closed at US$2.45 per million British thermal units on February 09, 2023 in only the second percentile for all months since 1990, after allowing for the increase in core consumer prices.

Working inventories in underground storage were 17 billion cubic feet, above the prior ten-year average on February 03.

But that was a massive turnaround from a deficit of 427 billion cubic feet recorded as recently as September 09, 2022.

Mild weather has played a relatively small role in erasing the earlier deficit and transforming it into a large incipient surplus.

The number of heating degree days across the Lower 48 states so far this winter has been only 5% below the long-term average.

More important has been loss of exports following the explosion at Freeport LNG’s terminal and reduced consumption stemming from high prices through much of 2022.

Freeport’s eventual reopening should provide an outlet for some excess inventory, but with stocks in Europe also very full, exporters will have to compete for price-sensitive customers in Asia.

Slumping futures prices will discourage drilling and incentivize electricity generators to run their gas-fired units for more hours at the expense of coal.

The number of rigs drilling for gas has been essentially unchanged since the start of September - after increasing by more than 50% in the first eight months of 2022.

Discounted futures prices will also boost combustion from the power sector, helping limit the accumulation of inventories this summer.

The summer-winter calendar spread between July 2023 and January 2024 has slumped into a contango of more than US$1.10 per million British thermal units from a backwardation of more than 50 cents in August 2022.

Gas prices are now trading below the cost of coal, once the superior efficiency of gas-fired units is taken into account, which will encourage maximum gas burn this summer.

 

Saudi Arabia raises over SR145 million for earthquake victims

The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) announced that as of Thursday evening, donations worth over SR145 million have been raised during the ongoing popular fundraising campaign to alleviate the suffering of the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria.

“The Saudi teams are determined to deliver aid to those affected by the devastating earthquake despite the obstacles. The Saudi humanitarian assistance will reach the needy wherever they are,” KSRelief said in a statement carried by the Al-Arabiya channel.

Two planeloads of Saudi relief supplies have already arrived in Turkey and a third plane, carrying relief supplies, is ready to leave for Turkey, the KSRelief said, adding that the Saudi relief mission is currently working on the ground in Turkey.

The Saudi popular campaign, launched by KSRelief on Wednesday, through the Sahem electronic platform, had raised SR80 million on the first day itself and the Saudi air bridge operation started dispatching relief supplies to Turkey and Syria. Specialized Saudi medical teams and rescue teams reached Adana Airport in the quake-hit Turkish region at dawn on Thursday.

The popular fundraising campaign was launched in implementation of the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman.

Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, advisor at the Royal Court and general supervisor of the KSRelief, inaugurated the campaign at KSRelief headquarters in Riyadh. He said that the volume of donations collected even before the launch of the campaign amounted to more than SR13 million and this embodies the commitment of the Saudi people and their response to succor the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria.

The death toll from the quakes, which struck early on Monday morning, passed 19,000 on Thursday across both Turkey and Syria. That surpasses the more than 17,000 people killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful quake hit Turkey’s more densely populated northwest.

Cold, hunger, and despair gripped hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on Thursday, while hopes faded of many more people being found alive amid the ruins of cities. Hundreds of thousands of people across both countries have been left homeless in the middle of winter. Many have camped out in makeshift shelters in supermarket car parks, mosques, roadsides, or amid the ruins, often desperate for food, water, and heat.

Brazil: Lula delays docking of Iranian warships

Brazil bowed to the US pressure and declined an Iranian request for two of its warships to dock in Rio de Janeiro at a time when Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was planning his trip to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden, reports Reuters.

Brazil's decision represents a gesture for closer ties with the Biden administration after US-Brazil relations soured under Lula's far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The move came despite Lula's longstanding opposition to US sanctions on Tehran, advocating for a neutral foreign policy.

On January 13, Brazil granted permission for the IRIS Makran & IRIS Dena ships to dock in Rio's port during January 23-30, according to a post in the official government gazette.

That window has been scrapped, with the ships now authorized to dock between February 26 and March 03, the Brazil's foreign ministry said.

A US official with direct knowledge of the situation said the prospect of Iranian warships in Rio ahead of Lula's meeting with Biden on Friday "was something unpleasant we wanted to avoid."

"There were a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations about this at many different levels," the official said, adding it was good news that the dates would no longer coincide.

A Brazilian military source confirmed that the federal government, via the foreign ministry, had shifted the dates and blocked the Iranian ships from docking.

"It's true that there was a veto (from the government)," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Iranian ships could not come during this period."

A spokesperson for Brazil's foreign ministry said it was a "wrong assumption" to say Washington had pressured Brazil.

"The ships not coming between January 23 to 30 had nothing to do with us, and then it was rescheduled to February 26-March 03," said the spokesperson. "Nothing to do with the US"

Diplomacy with Iran was one of the highlights of Lula's efforts to bolster Brazil's international standing during his previous presidential mandate.

In 2010, he sought to broker a nuclear deal between Iran and the United States, traveling to Tehran to meet then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Lula recoiled at US sanctions on Iran and has declined to choose sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, saying Brazil is neutral and wants dialogue to reach peace.

European Union Floating Wind Turbine Experience

Floating wind has gained further momentum with proof that the European Union’s FloatGen facility, off the coast of Brittany, has run at maximum power more than 60% of the time over a three-month period.

The figure of running at maximum power of 60% of the time is significantly higher than bottom-fixed installations; however, there is a significant shortage of suitable sector support vessels so far.

The FloatGen facility, comprising a 2MW Vestas turbine mated with a ‘damping pool’, BW Ideol, that reduces the impact of heavy swells and high seas in stormy conditions, has affirmed findings from Equinor’s floating wind facility, the 30MW Hywind Scotland wind park. This was commissioned in 2017 and has demonstrated a performance factor of more than 57%.  

Commenting on the data, BW Ideol’s Chief Executive Paul de la Guérivière said, “FloatGen – one of the few floating wind turbines currently in operation across the globe – continues to deliver outstanding results in terms of reliability, efficiency, and production. It keeps on validating the merits of our unique floating offshore wind technology, even in the harshest environments.

“Such repeated performance, high availability and consequently high capacity factor underlines the benefits of floating wind and its ability to capture the best possible wind resources without depth constraints, contributing to a much needed energy resilience in the process,” he added.

The drive for floating wind development has gathered momentum in Europe over the last 12 months as energy security climbs the agenda in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago. The climate change emergency is adding extra impetus.

The FloatGen findings have far-reaching implications for shipping’s offshore sector. There is already a dramatic shortage of large offshore wind installation vessels and few are capable of handling the vast components required by the floating wind sector.

In the US, offshore wind has become a top priority for the Biden Administration and many regions, particularly off the deepwater west coast, are unsuitable for bottom-fixed installations.

Although there are now several Jones Act-compliant vessels under construction, there is a dire shortage of installation and support vessels for both the early fixed-bottom facilities, and the floating installations of the future.

Earlier this week, Netherlands-based ship design and construction group, Damen, released design details of a floating wind installation vessel, FLOW-SV. The highly sophisticated 150 meter ship, ready for methanol propulsion, has a maximum pull strength of 1,000 tons for embedding anchors around each turbine, two remotely operated vehicles for surveying and checking the security of anchor groundings, and a range of propulsion and component handling capabilities to meet the floating wind installation challenge.  

Courtesy: Seatrade Maritime News

People of Pakistan need replies from the incumbent government and the IMF

After having read the details of foreign exchange reserves held by Pakistan a few questions come to my mind, I am sure my readers also have similar questions. Let me enumerate some:

1. Is the present economic team competent enough to occupy these officers? If they could not resolve top of the agenda item, negotiations with IMF, in all the honesty allowing these incompetent people in strategically important office tantamount to ruining the country.

2. The Prime Minister as well as the Finance Minister is putting the blame of hike in electricity and gas tariffs, withdrawal of subsidies, collection of petroleum levy on IMF, will they be kind enough to let the nation know the proposals they had sent to the IMF?

3. Why the IMF is not demanding cut in the extravaganzas of the incumbent government?

4. IMF has endorsed all the hikes, despite knowing that Pakistan will plunge deeper into the debt. My question to the lender of last resort is, have you come up with a bailout program for Pakistan or want to keep the present rulers in power and let the country meet eminent default?

Fall in natural gas prices new headache for United States

A 46% drop in natural gas prices this year is rippling across the US shale patch, threatening to slow drilling and chill deal-making in a move unthinkable six months ago as global demand soared.

Analysts are chopping their outlook for gas prices this year, and for production and earnings. The drop has also put a cloud over merger and acquisition activity, analysts said.

Such moves were unfathomable six months ago as Russia reduced its gas flows to Europe and US gas became a hot commodity. The number of active gas-drilling rigs jumped about 48% to 157 in the first six months of 2022, according to data from oilfield services firm Baker Hughes.

Analysts expect gas drilling rigs to fall beginning this month. Two services firms - Liberty Energy and Helmerich & Payne - recently warned they may need to relocate equipment as operators pull back in gassy areas.

US gas futures were trading on Wednesday at US$2.42 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) amid warmer weather and a prolonged LNG export plant outage, down from over US$9 per mmBtu in August 2022. They averaged US$5.46 per mmBtu last year, the highest price in over a decade.

The outlook is for more of the same. Prices will remain around US$2.50 per mmBtu this summer, down from an earlier US$3.50 per mmBtu outlook, predicts energy technology firm Enverus. It also sees exit-to-exit 2023 production growing by 1.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd), from 3 bcfd in 2022.

The company says well completions activity in the Haynesville gas region will need to fall by about 8% to prevent storage from exceeding a limit of 4.3 trillion cubic feet (tcf).

"If we don't see a decline in activity in the Haynesville, we'll blow through" the US storage maximum of 4.3 tcf, said Jonathan Snyder, an Enverus vice president.

The gas-price drop has slowed deal-making and threatens some proposed acquisitions that have not closed, said Andrew Dittmar, who tracks mergers and acquisitions for Enverus.

Prices further out should stave off any collapse in drilling and deal-making. Gas delivered in January and February 2024 is trading above US$4 per mmBtu, well above where those contracts traded in recent years.

"Is someone buying the assets for more than the next 10 months? If it is more than for the next 10 months, current pricing shouldn't drive the deal value," said Thomas McNulty, who advises on mergers and acquisitions and runs his own firm.

 

 

Russia demands United States to clarify its position in Nord Stream explosions

According to Retures, Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday the United States had questions to answer over its role in explosions on the undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines last year.

Commenting on a report published earlier on Wednesday that said the United States was involved in the explosions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called on the White House to comment on the facts that had been presented.

Reuters was unable to verify the report, published by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on his blog, alleging US involvement in the explosions.

The White House said on Wednesday that Hersh's account was utterly false and complete fiction.

Moscow, without providing evidence, has repeatedly said the West was behind the explosions affecting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines last September - multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects that carried Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Western officials have denied those accusations.

"The White House must now comment on all these facts," Zakharova said in a post on her Telegram page where she summarised Hersh's main claims regarding the alleged US involvement.

Investigators from Sweden and Denmark - in whose exclusive economic zones the explosions occurred - have said the ruptures were a result of sabotage, but have not said who they believe was responsible.

Russia said the countries have something to hide and are purposefully blocking Russia out from the investigation.

Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to double the amount of gas Russia could send directly to Germany under the sea, was completed in September 2021, but was never put into operation after Berlin shelved certification just days before Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in February.

(This story has been corrected to say that blasts were inside exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark, not in their territorial waters.)