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[waldron] 05/12/2018 07:31

05/12/2018 | 8:03
GTT has received an order from the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) Korean shipyard for the design of the tanks of a new LNG tanker with a capacity of 174,000 m3 on behalf of the Greek shipowner Minerva. The tanks in this unit, used to transport LNG, will incorporate the Mark III Flex + membrane containment system developed by GTT, offering a guaranteed rate of evaporation of 0.07% V / day. Its delivery is scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

Philippe Berterottière, Chairman and CEO of GTT, said: "We are very pleased with the renewed confidence of our partner of excellence Samsung Heavy Industries as well as welcoming Minerva for its entry into the LNG industry this year. brings to five the number of LNG carriers equipped with this brand new technology ".

[sarkasm] 29/11/2018 19:50

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Booming LNG industry weighs up headwinds from oil to renewables
November 29 2018 10:07 PM
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An LNG
An LNG carrier sits docked at the Cheniere Energy terminal in this aerial photograph taken over Sabine Pass, Texas (file). US LNG production has been rising since Cheniere started its Sabine Pass project in Louisiana in 2016.
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Bloomberg/London

Liquefied natural gas may be one of the fastest-growing fossil fuels but that didn’t stop market participants spotting clouds on the horizon when they met on the first day of the CWC World LNG Summit in Lisbon.
Below are some of the most pressing issues discussed at the biggest annual event for the industry in Europe.


Oil and economy
Brent crude is trading below $60 a barrel, having lost almost 11% this year. A perceived economic slowdown, which is affecting oil, is a challenge for the gas and LNG industry, said Eric Bensaude, managing director at Cheniere Marketing. The booming US projects tend to offer contracts linked to the US Henry Hub natural gas benchmark, which has gained 50% this year, making competition difficult with the oil-linked contracts that dominate in long-term LNG supply deals.
“We have to remain competitive,” Bensaude said. “You don’t want oil to be too high because otherwise the LNG industry gets carried away, you don’t want it to be low because otherwise Henry Hub becomes unaffordable and it switches to oil again.”


Renewables
As the costs of renewable energy fall and battery technology is developed to store it, the natural gas industry sees a role for itself in the future energy mix. “We should embrace the growth of renewables, we have no alternative, it makes no sense to confront that, that has to be part of our global landscape,” said Galp chief executive officer Carlos Gomes da Silva said. “I am seeing natural gas and LNG in particular as not a transitional energy but as destination energy.”


Investment shortfall
A lack of final investment decisions in the past years is expected to weigh on supply by the middle of the next decade, when it is seen falling short of demand. This year, Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Train 3 and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s LNG Canada got the green light, but more multibillion-dollar projects are needed and expected next year to secure the second wave of supply. The lack of FIDs could generate a jump in prices in the early 2020s and potentially make LNG unaffordable, risking a shift back to cheaper and dirtier coal, Bensaude said.


Spike in US gas?
The rally in US benchmark Henry Hub futures earlier this month was seasonal and related to a cold snap and is unlikely to be sustained, according to panellists at the conference.
Cheniere’s Bensaude sees a long-term range of $3 to $4 per million British thermal units. Michael Sabel, co-CEO of Global Venture LNG, another US export project developer, sees the range at $2.25 to $3.25 on average.


China
China has led LNG demand growth but those increases are becoming less certain. China imposed a 10% tariff on US LNG, and sellers are re-organizing flows to bring alternative sources of supply.
What’s more, from October industrial demand started to decline to avoid the higher costs observed at the same time last winter, said Yanyan Zhu, general manager of the trading department at CNOOC Gas & Power. Longer term, China’s LNG imports face increasing pressure from cheaper pipeline gas, including from Russia, and by government support for domestic gas production. “In the future when the government is encouraging domestic production, pipeline gas is coming, I think the role of LNG will be reduced to some extent,” Zhu said.


Impact of US LNG expansion on other exporters
US LNG production has been rising since Cheniere started its Sabine Pass project in Louisiana in 2016. That is becoming a concern to other exporters, who are rushing to get their projects finished.
Tavares Martinho, vice president for exploration and production at Mozambique’s national oil company, Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos EP, compared competing with US LNG to “a monkey with a stick trying to hit a lion.” Mozambique is among the most promising future LNG exporters in Africa. “Competing with the US is very difficult,” he said.

[florenceorbis] 25/11/2018 19:52

A Gamechanger In European Gas Markets?
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/25/2018 - 13:00
1

Authored by Irina Slav via Oilprice.com,

The Southern Gas Corridor on which the European Union is pinning most of its hopes for natural gas supply diversification away from Russia is coming along nicely and will not just be on schedule, but it will come with a price tag that is US$5-billion lower than the original budget, BP’s vice president in charge of the project told S&P Global Platts this week.

"Often these kinds of mega-projects fall behind schedule. But the way the projects have maintained the schedule has meant that your traditional overspend, or utilization of contingency, has not occurred," Joseph Murphy said, adding that savings had been the top priority for the supermajor.

The Southern Gas Corridor will carry natural gas from the Azeri Shah Deniz 2 field in the Caspian Sea to Europe via a network of three pipelines: the Georgia South Caucasus Pipeline, which was recently expanded and can carry 23 billion cubic meters of gas; the TANAP pipeline via Turkey, with a peak capacity of 31 billion cubic meters annually; and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP, which will link with TANAP at the Turkish-Greek border and carry 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually to Italy.

TANAP was commissioned in July this year and the first phase of TAP is expected to be completed in two years, so Europe will hopefully have more non-Russian gas at the start of the new decade. But not that much, at least initially: TANAP will operate at an initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters annually, of which 6 billion cubic meters will be supplied to Turkey and the remainder will go to Europe. In the context of total natural gas demand of 564 billion cubic meters in 2020, according to a forecast from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies released earlier this year, this is not a lot.

Yet at some point the TANAP will reach its full capacity and hopefully by that time, TAP will be completed. Surprisingly, it was the branch to Italy that proved the most challenging, and BP’s Murphy acknowledged that. While Turkey built TANAP on time to the surprise of the project operator, TAP has been struggling because of legal issues and uncertainty after the new Italian government entered office earlier this year.

At the time, the government of Giuseppe Conte said the pipeline was pointless but, said Murphy, since then he has accepted the benefits the infrastructure would offer, such as transit fees. And yet local opposition in southern Italy remains strong but BP still sees first deliveries of gas through Italy in 2020.

The BP executive admitted that at first the Southern Gas Corridor wouldn’t make a splash.

"The 10 Bcm/year into Europe is not a game-changer from a volume point of view, but it is a game-changer from a new source of product into mainland Europe perspective and it can be expanded."

Meanwhile, however, Russia and Turkey are building another pipeline, Turkish Stream, that will supply gas to Turkey and Eastern Europe, as well as possibly Hungary. The two recently marked the completion of its subsea section. Turkish Stream will have two lines, each able to carry up to 15.75 billion cubic meters. One will supply the Turkish market and the other European countries.

In this context, the Southern Gas Corridor seems to have more of a political rather than practical significance for the time being, giving Europe the confidence that it could at some future point import a lot more Caspian gas because the infrastructure is there.

[waldron] 22/11/2018 07:37

MELBOURNE, Australia--Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) has joined ConocoPhillips (COP) in exiting a stalled natural-gas project, agreeing to sell its stake in fields far off the northern coast of Australia to the government of East Timor for US$300 million.

The deal means the small nation will have majority control of the Greater Sunrise gas fields, allowing it to drive plans for the fuel to be piped back to its shores to a proposed plant that would chill it to liquefied natural gas.

Shell said late Wednesday it had agreed to sell its 26.6% stake in the fields, which were discovered in 1974 and hold an estimated gross resource of 5.13 trillion cubic feet of gas and 225.9 million barrels of condensate, a liquid often found in gas fields that is used as a fuel and in plastics.

In early October, Conoco struck a deal to sell its 30% interest to East Timor for US$350 million. Both transactions remain subject to receiving funding approval from the Timor-Leste Council of Ministers and National Parliament, as well as regulatory approvals and rights by the other partner to pre-empt a sale.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL.AU) operates the Greater Sunrise project with a 33.4% stake. Osaka Gas Co. holds the remaining 10%.

Zoe Yujnovich, executive vice president of Shell's Australian arm, said that while the company had different views on the best development scenario for the Greater Sunrise project it respected East Timor's determination to develop the fields through an onshore LNG facility.

The Sunrise and Troubadour gas fields, collectively known as Greater Sunrise, are located about 90 miles southeast of East Timor and 280 northwest of Darwin in Australia's north. In March, Australia and East Timor settled a longstanding dispute on maritime boundaries that previously included almost 80% of the Greater Sunrise project in Australian waters and the rest in a joint-development area.

The alternative proposal considered by the two governments and the venture partners would see the gas tied into existing pipelines to the operating Darwin LNG plant in northern Australia.

A conciliation commission set up when Australia and East Timor began negotiating maritime boundaries in 2016 under the United Nations's Convention on the Law of the Sea, estimated that under prevailing market conditions plans for a plant in East Timor would struggle to meet the sort of return expected by an international oil company and would require a direct subsidy or another funding kicking in billions of dollars to ensure the project got uop.

East Timor's special representative, Xanana Gusmao, said the country appreciated Shell's willingness to sell its interests in the project. "Shell's attitude throughout the negotiations shows that it is ready to consider not only its commercial interests but also the interests of small nations," he said.



Write to Robb M. Stewart at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 21, 2018 17:05 ET (22:05 GMT)

[the grumpy old men] 20/11/2018 15:13

Natural Gas 20 Nov 2018 | 12:19 UTC London

France's Engie signs up for natural gas from Black Sea Oil & Gas' Romania field

Author Stuart Elliott Editor Maurice Geller Commodity Natural Gas

Highlights

To take 0.5 Bcm/year from Midia gas project

Project not yet at FID due to new offshore law

Romanian President signed off legislation last week

London — France's Engie has agreed to take 0.5 Bcm/year of gas from the planned Midia gas project offshore Romania operated by private equity-backed upstream junior Black Sea Oil & Gas (BSOG), the companies said Tuesday.
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Under the agreement, Engie will purchase gas from the project -- which comprises the Ana and Doina offshore fields -- for a minimum of 10 years.

BSOG CEO Mark Beacom said the sales agreement with Engie -- which is subject to BSOG taking final investment decision on the project -- was an important step forward in the development.

"We are delighted to have secured this important agreement for the sale of our gas," Beacom said. "BSOG is working steadily toward achieving all the remaining milestones on the project required to reach FID such that a decision can be taken on whether to approve FID," he said.

Gas from Midia -- which is estimated to hold some 10 Bcm of gas -- will be delivered at Vadu entry point into the national gas transmission system.

Edouard Neviaski, CEO of Engie's Global Energy Management business unit, said the Midia project was an "exciting" new gas source in Romania.

"The project can be stable long-term source of supply for the development of Engie's position in Romania and the region and we strongly believe that this would enhance Romanian security of supply for years to come," Neviaski said.

Earlier this month, BSOG also signed a deal with gas grid operator Transgaz agreeing the contractual framework for moving gas from the Midia development into the Romanian network.

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The contractual period covers 15 years with a first gas delivery date on February 1, 2021, at a transmission capacity of 1 Bcm/year.
OFFSHORE LAW

Despite the optimism, BSOG -- majority-owned by the Carlyle Group -- still continues to evaluate the impact of Romania's controversial new offshore law, which was passed by parliament in late October and received sign-off from President Klaus Iohannis on November 12.

"The assessment of the offshore law on the project's economic viability remains a key part in determining whether a favorable decision to FID will be taken," Beacom said Tuesday.

Under the terms of the new offshore law, operators will be required to sell 50% of their offshore gas output in a centralized marketplace.

The offshore law was criticized by operators, including ExxonMobil and Austria's OMV, due to a lack of clarity over long-term tax stability, though the final version included fiscal security guarantees.

OMV CEO Rainer Seele last month said the company needed to pore over the details of the law before being able to move its 84 Bcm Neptun gas project in the Black Sea to FID.

The European Commission also warned this month that the new law could be "counter-productive" and deter operators from investing.

The Romanian Black Sea Titleholders Association (RBSTA) -- a body grouping together Romania's offshore operators including ExxonMobil, OMV, Romgaz, BSOG and Russia's Lukoil -- has warned that the 50% trading obligation would be harmful to Romania's gas sector.

In a position paper, it says the "obligation to trade in a pre-established manner, exclusively on the Romanian gas trading platform, is a commercially restrictive policy."

Romania is seen as a rare opportunity to boost European production in the coming years.

Romania is effectively self-sufficient in gas -- with production and demand both at around 10-11 Bcm/year -- so it would make sense to export new gas output, with a new pipeline network, BRUA, under development to take Romanian gas via Hungary to Slovakia.

However, the government has said it sees Black Sea gas as a way to "re-industrialize" Romania and boost domestic gas demand.

Romania is already under investigation by the EC for alleged antitrust violations specifically around blocking Romanian gas exports to other countries in the region.

--Stuart Elliott, [e-mail]

--Edited by Maurice Geller, [e-mail]

[waldron] 19/11/2018 15:42

Natural Gas Price Explosion Bankrupts Traders
By Irina Slav - Nov 19, 2018, 9:30 AM CST
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A Tampa, Florida based options trading firm, OptionSellers, went dark this weekend after it informed its clients of a “catastrophic loss event,” resulting from a short squeeze on the natural gas market, ZeroHedge reports, citing parts of the letter.

According to the letter, the short squeeze took place at a rate “truly beyond anything I [president James Cordier] have seen in my career. It overran our risk control systems and left us at the mercy of the market.”

The market obviously had no mercy for traders shorting natural gas; last week, on Wednesday, natural gas shot up 18 percent to the highest since 2014, on the back of forecasts about cold weather that drove traders into a frenzy as they bought more gas to cover their short positions, probably opened on reports of ample supply in the United States.

Cold weather this time of the year is hardly a surprising piece of information, but it somehow managed to surprise traders betting on a price fall in natural gas. Since the start of the month, according to CNBC, natural gas has gained as much as 48 percent, and according to CME Group, trade in the commodity on Wednesday hit an all-time high of 1.2 million contracts.
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The supply worry is understandable. The grounds for it are EIA reports of low stockpiles, although both stockpiles and production have been on the rise: last week the authority reported that gas in storage had risen by 39 billion cu ft to 3.247 trillion cu ft in the week to November 9. Indeed this is below the five-year average of 3.848 trillion cu ft and below the level of storage this time last year, when it stood at 3.775 trillion cu ft of gas.

In this context, one analyst last week told CNBC that natural gas could soar from the current level of about US$4.6 per million British thermal units to as much as US$7 or even US$8 per mmBtu if the weather forecasts turn out to be true and the winter is colder than previously expected.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

[la forge] 17/11/2018 18:55

hxxp://fna.ir/bpohov
Sat Nov 17, 2018 4:26
US Continues Imports of Russian Gas Which It Insists Europe Should Stop Buying
US Continues Imports of Russian Gas Which It Insists Europe Should Stop Buying

TEHRAN (FNA)- Several cargo ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant have arrived in the US, Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova announced, highlighting the obvious weirdness of the situation.

“Oddly enough, with all this visible public flow of negative rhetoric from Washington, Russian liquefied natural gas is successfully being supplied to the US,” Zakharova said during the weekly press briefing, RT reported.

“Recently, at least three tankers with liquefied natural gas from the Russian Yamal LNG field on board have reached the US coast,” she added.

This is not the first batch of Yamal-originated LNG. In January, a month after the facility started operating, French tanker Gaselys delivered the first LNG cargo to the US city of Boston. The fuel was reportedly purchased by Malaysian oil and gas firm Petronas, transported to the UK, and then resold. In March, Boston reportedly welcomed another LNG carrier – Provalys owned by French multinational Engie. The tanker reportedly delivered the second LNG cargo from the Russian Yamal plant.

Zakharova’s comment came shortly after US Department of Energy Secretary Mark Menezes said that Washington is ready to back projects aimed at diversifying energy supplies to countries of the European Union even if Russian corporations take part in them.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged the EU to look for alternatives to cheaper Russian gas, mostly delivered to Europe by pipelines. Last month, PGNiG, Poland’s gas company, signed a 20-year deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.

While promoting American LNG, Trump has repeatedly slammed Europe over its energy dependence on Russia, which he characterized as an unreliable partner. Earlier, Germany agreed to fund the building of a terminal for receiving American LNG. At the same time, Germany is participating in the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia.

[waldron] 14/11/2018 19:52

Gold COMEX 1,213.40 +1.00%
Silver COMEX 14.12 +1.02%
Copper COMEX 2.71 +0.93%
Brent Crude Oil NYMEX 65.94 +0.72%
Gasoline NYMEX 1.56 +0.89%
Natural Gas NYMEX 4.81 +17.19%

[waldron] 14/11/2018 17:23

Total
49.66 +0.30%


Engie
12.5 -0.36%

Orange
14.705 +0.51%

FTSE 100
7,033.79 -0.28%
Dow Jones
25,140.82 -0.58%
CAC 40
5,068.85 -0.65%



Brent Crude Oil NYMEX 66.68 +1.85%
Gasoline NYMEX 1.57 +1.69%
Natural Gas NYMEX 4.57 +11.36%


BP
512.1 -0.27%


Shell A
2,358.5 -0.80%

Shell B
2,406.5 -0.93%


TOMORROW