By Keith Schaefer
Western Canadian natural gas exports to the United States andNorthern California in particular could be completely displaced byabundant, low cost gas production and several new gas pipelines in theUnited States, says a new study by energy analysis firm Bentek.
Overall, Canadian gas exports to the United States will drop by 2billion cubic feet per day over the next few years – almost 30% – andthis impending loss of the Northern California market builds uponprevious declines for western Canadian gas exports to the U.S.northeast.
Increased Canadian demand and declining Canadian supply will pick upsome of the slack, but the report said it won’t be enough to offset asignificant loss of exports to the U.S. market in the near term.
Bentek’s report, titled “The Big Squeeze,” outlines how fast-growingproduction from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania is displacingCanadian gas to the lucrative northeast U.S. market, and how newpipeline capacity carrying low cost gas out of the Rocky Mountains isnow set to take over for much of Canadian gas to the U.S. midwest andlucrative California markets.
“What we outlined in our study wascomplete displacement of Canadian gas into Northern California by thesummer of 2014,” said Jack Weixel, director of energy analysis atBentek.
While the new $6-billion Rockies Express pipeline going from Coloradoto Ohio has been displacing western Canadian gas production for about ayear now, U.S. natural gas production from the Marcellus shale has beendoing the same recently for Canadian gas to the U.S. northeast.Canadian suppliers have been able to send more natural gas into themidwest and western United States to help make up for that drop.
But Bentek says even that market is at risk and Canadians could seeit curtailed within the next two weeks, in early December 2010. That’swhen low-cost Rockies gas supply will start flowing east on the newlyinstalled Bison Pipeline. This will give Rockies producers an additional500 million cf per day of capacity out of the Powder River basin inWyoming.
The Bison connects into the Northern Border Pipeline, which movesmost western Canadian supply. Weixel expects the Bison Pipeline tocreate stiff competition for Canadian gas, which he says has to getcheaper to stay competitive.
“They [Canadian gas producers] need to drop 14 cents [per mcf]. Let’ssay Rockies gas is $3.50/mcf – that means that AECO [the Canadiannatural gas benchmark price out of Edmonton] needs to be priced $3.36 tobe competitive in northern California,” Weixel says, adding that thebreak-even price for certain Rockies gas producers in the Pinedale andJonah tight sands plays of Wyoming is well below $3 per mcf.
Weixel expects net Canadian exports to drop 2 bcf/d through 2015 –out of a total of 6.9 bcf/d now. But it’s not all gloomy for producersand their shareholders.
“At the same time as exports are declining, you’ve got Canadiandemand growing, primarily from oilsands in the west and coal retirementsin the east,” he says. “You’ve also got production slipping fromconventional gas plays in Alberta. So there is a tighteningsupply-demand balance.”
“Traditionally that would lend itself to gas prices getting stronger.But we believe that due to the drop in exports, that there will be justas much gas on hand in Canada as there is now.”
Canadian gas production is actually going up because of theunconventional plays in British Columbia, such as the Montney. However,Weixel says the gas rig count in Alberta dropped off a cliff thisSeptember, and is about half the number it was last year and about onequarter what it was in 2008.
Keith Schaefer writes a financial newsletter on juniorenergy stocks, The Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin, www.oilandgas-investments.com