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Natural gas glut could hit U.S.
As many as seven massive natural gas export terminals are expected to start up overseas this year, expanding worldwide capacity by 20 percent and flooding markets with new supplies of the key power plant and heating fuel. Dozens of new tankers capable of carrying natural gas in a liquefied form are slated to hit the seas.Just as these new supplies come on line, worldwide demand is expected to drop as the global recession deepens. Operators of these new facilities are unlikely to cut back production, however, so shipments of liquefied natural gas will most likely head to the deepest markets with the greatest amount of natural gas storage capacity -- the United States. 'Counterintuitive' "It's completely counterintuitive," said Murray Douglas, a global LNG analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Houston, who is predicting U.S. LNG imports will grow 30 percent to 456 billion cubic feet this year and to more than 1.1 trillion cubic feet by 2013. "We don't believe Asia and Europe will be in a position to absorb this new production, and the U.S. is the only market that can take it, that has a large amount of storage." The wave of imports might even be strong enough to challenge growing domestic natural gas production from various shale formations, including the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth and Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas. "This can put pressure on U.S. gas prices and could delay the full development of some of the new shale projects," Douglas said. Other analysts, including Houston-based Waterborne Energy and Raleigh, N.C.-based Pan Eurasia Enterprises, agree that an American gas import surge may be coming. Even the Department of Energy updated its LNG import predictions for 2009 recently to include the possibility of such a surge. Big energy chunk Natural gas accounts for 23 percent of total energy consumed in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, much of it used to fuel power plants. Twelve percent of the gas comes from foreign suppliers, most of it through pipelines from Canada, and about 3 percent comes from overseas aboard LNG tankers. Changing to liquid Natural gas turns into liquid at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit. In that condensed form, it can be transported in specially designed oceangoing tankers. When the tankers reach a gasification terminal, the liquid is heated back into gas for transport by pipeline. 2007 was a record year for LNG imports into the U.S., with some 770 billion cubic feet arriving through five terminals. Three terminals came on line in 2008, including Houston-based Cheniere Energy's terminal on the Louisiana side of the Sabine Pass south of Port Arthur and Freeport LNG's terminal on Quintana Island south of Houston. The third, owned by The Woodlands-based Excelerate Energy, is near Boston. Posted by: Fred 2009-02-02 |
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