More energy posts

Another dump of energy articles, questions, etc.

Will big oil charge ahead while smaller E&P's face liquidity issues?
http://on.wsj.com/1KsPoya via @liamdenning
The huge energy companies may be able to power through this downfall assuming prices start rising and they can swoop in and gobble up some low priced assets in the wake of the collapse.

Productivity improvements in oil and nat gas production have been very impressive over the last few years so looking at rig counts over a long time period have lost their efficacy.

https://rbnenergy.com/getting-better-all-the-time-productivity-improvements-crude-production-and-moores-law 

Great post on the recent improvements

World versus US oil prices
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=10uD

For a while US (WTI) prices separated quite dramatically from world prices (BRENT) Will this recur in the future?  The spread helped US refiners earn outsized profits.

Will the Keystone pipeline ever get built?
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2025244144_pipelineeconomicsxml.html

We may see instead a pipeline going east / west in Canada.  The oil must flow!
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/canada-oks-oil-pipeline-pacific-coast

Crude oil shipped via rail has exploded over the last few years.  Will this trend continue?
https://www.aar.org/data-center/rail-traffic-data

Did oil shipments crowd out coal shipments? And will the coal finally get to the power plants?

http://www.npr.org/2014/09/23/350946899/stockpiling-coal-for-winter-proves-problematic-for-power-plants?ft=3&f=1003,1004,1007,1013,1014,1017,1019,1128

Another article on floating storage

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/09/2083862/the-return-of-floating-storage-a-k-a-the-sharks-are-back/

Some Questions regarding oil, nat gas, and energy in general

Some questions have been floating about in my head after the great fall in oil prices and their rippling through all the other various forms of energy.  The predictions are few, if any, just a lot of thinking out loud and links. I've been collecting all this in too many separate nooks and crannies and it is time to collate and collect my thoughts and links.

It's not pretty but it gets the data posted an in one spot.  Questions are just questions, don't look for subtext. Hopefully there will be more than one post.

Will re fracking now become more of a thing?  With lower rigs costs and already built in infrastructure will the older fracked fields get a makeover?

http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2015/01/oil-its-cheaper-to-refrack-slb-hal-wft.html

Consumers will gain from lower oil prices yet industries related to oil production, distribution, transportation will suffer.  Which will adjust faster? Concentrated pain versus diffused benefit and over what timeframe?

Jim Chanos has some interesting commentary regarding the tension between big oil's economics versus the frackers.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102343976


Major trading houses are taking advantage of the contango in oil to store it now in supertankers and sell it forward, or perhaps just speculate?  Either way inventories are going up

http://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-largest-traders-use-offshore-supertankers-to-store-oil-1421689744

According to shipbrokers and analysts, major traders including Vitol SA, Gunvor SA, Trafigura Beheer BV and Koch Supply & Trading Co. Ltd have chartered supertankers capable of storing a combined total of more than 30 million barrels of oil—many of them in the past few weeks.

RBN Energy runs some numbers on the contango trade (02/02/15)
https://rbnenergy.com/skipping-the-crude-contango-the-floating-crude-storage-trade

eia.gov provides some production decline graphs to see what would happen if new production just stopped in the lower 48. My eyes say a falloff from 7 million / year to ~ 5 million by 2016
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=19711

Also discusses backlogs in production.  Would hate to have paid up for a well that's going to be cash flow negative right now ! :(

Global LNG prices converge, upper band crushed by drop in oil prices
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/27/lng-prices-global-idUSL6N0V603620150127