Wednesday, October 30, 2019

"The U.S. Just Doubled Its Natural Gas Exports"

We've mentioned, a few times, the effect LNG exports are having on the weekly storage reports, and thus on prices:
October 17
LNG has become more of a factor in the Thursday storage numbers, to the point that the timing of just one or two ships will change the injection/withdrawal numbers.
It makes life interesting.

And speaking of interesting, Senator Elizabeth Warren has stated she will, if elected President, halt all U.S. LNG exports. We have a few trades for that and for equities in general, not just for a Warren presidency but for the possibility the Senator is the Democrat nominee.
There is opportunity everywhere, every day....
September 28
TL;DR: An uptick in LNG shipments was not enough to offset lower demand and higher production.
September 12
We'll be back with more after the Weekly Update is released. In the meantime, today's Today in Energy happens to be on natural gas and highlights one of the reasons to be cautious. There is a lot of gas around.
Even just one-or-two tanker loads of LNG that get delayed or postponed could shake up the storage numbers:... 
From OilPrice:
The United States saw its net natural gas exports in the first half of 2019 more than double from the same period last year, thanks to more liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity coming online in recent months, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says.

Between January and June 2019, U.S. net natural gas exports averaged 4.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), more than double the average net exports in 2018, data from EIA’s Natural Gas Monthly showed.

The United States, which exports natural gas via pipelines to neighbors Canada and Mexico and exports LNG to several other countries, became a net natural gas exporter on an annual basis in 2017, for the first time in nearly 60 years.

A large part of the recent increase in U.S. natural gas exports is due to a growing number of LNG facilities coming online. U.S. exports of LNG jumped by 37 percent in the first half of 2019 compared to the first half of 2018, according to EIA data.

As of June this year, the U.S. had a total LNG export capacity of 5.4 Bcf/d across four facilities and nine liquefaction trains, and two additional export facilities have come online in the second half of this year so far—the first train at Freeport LNG in Texas and the first ten trains at Elba Island in Georgia....MUCH MORE 
I can't look at the location of the Georgia facility without hearing the teacher quoting the old (supposedly about Napoleon) palindrome:
Able was I ere I saw Elba
And me thinking "I like the Panama one better."