I was poking around to see if I could find stats on LNG imports and their trends. While I can't claim much in the way of success, I happened on this from EIA:
eia.doe.gov
If I'm reading this correctly, we are seeing more LNG imported YTD. As far as I can tell, this data includes at most 1Q03. Note the total LNG imports, primarily from Trinidad, have nearly tripled YOY.
I understand current capacity near 2.5BCF/d with expansions (mostly coming online 2006) taking that to 4.5 and new builds (2007?) then to 6BCF/d. (Page 3 of pi.energy.gov )
I think the majors have spoken- drilling elsewhere and shipping the gas makes more financial sense then plying the US for elephants. The higher forward strip may allow players selling futures to lock in returns with the intent to deliver using shipped LNG. Greenspan seems to have heard the message clearly.
Of course, the Energy bill before congress may alter the landscape some. I had to ask myself, why build a pipeline when GTL and LNG efforts are already in progress? Thus far, I've come up with jobs, and sunk capital into US/CDN plants dependent on natgas as an energy source/feedstock. The latter being a limitation on GTL economics.
Ships are being built and delivered:
poten.com
Some nice charts;
eia.doe.gov
An idea: some of that base storage gas injected at low $/mcf could be converted to working gas via addition of compression (a thought evolving from this threads efforts). If operators see the immediate return of gas, sold at today's prices or via futures, swamping initial compression capital costs + NPV of future operations costs of running with compression. Once the low cost basis base gas is converted/sold, the storage operator is locked into using compression forever, or replacing base gas at current market rates. |
