Increasing Natural Gas Trade Between the U.S and Mexico
The Heritage Foundation Background Paper
Increasing Natural Gas Trade Between the U.S and Mexico
Authors: Dr. Daniel Fine, Ph.D and Nicolas Loris
SUMMARY
The Full article in the Farmington Daily Times Energy Magazine (USA TODAY)
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With the OPEC-Russia meeting ahead, the price of oil is at a crossroad.
President Trump wants lower prices for gasoline at the pump and the Democratic Party wants a shortage to lift prices higher. This is the 2020 presidential election, to re-elect Trump or a create a Democratic left-center White House.
Is OPEC-Russia ready to sustain output cutbacks for $70 Brent Oil or continue revenue maximum against market share? Curiously, in the conversation at Vienna the Oxy purchase of Anadarko will resonate. Why? Oxy must now increase its export of oil to lower its debt (Warren Buffet and more) and prevent a serious management miscalculation of paying too much for Anadarko.
Permian Delaware shale, with new high volume pipelines completed soon, must find expanding import markets of l.5 million barrels of oil per day or the equivalent of OPEC-Russia resuming late 2016 output for export.
As this writer concludes this column for the The Farmington Daily Times’ Energy Magazine, which Is going on hiatus in San Juan County after this edition, there is no change in an outlook that dates back to the oil price crash of 2014-2016.
There is too much oil (over-supply) against world demand for it.
Exxon-XTO in the Permian is prepared for $40 per barrel, and to still add $82 billion value in the New Mexican Permian or the Delaware in the next 40 years.
However, along with Chevron, Oxy, EOG and Pioneer, it must have a market for the economic recovery of reserves estimated at nearly 47 billion barrels in the Permian Delaware Basin. They must export against OPEC-Russia production.
The lifting cost of Saudi Aramco oil remains lower than Permian Shale. Saudi Aramco has sold debt (bonds) and 63% of its cash flow goes to its government? With oil demand slack and sluggish, and electric vehicles preparing for a 2024 market challenge both technically and politically (zero emissions).
While associated natural gas has partially become a free commodity from Permian Delaware producers, natural gas is up next, after coal, as a target for Green Energy. It should resemble oil on a smaller scale as price dependent entirely on exports in the form of LNG.
Will Persian Gulf, Australian, and Russian natural gas production roll backward in favor of American LNG? American exporters today cannot compete in a $5 per ton Asian LNG market.
Some San Juan Basin producers at the recent San Juan Basin Energy Conference openly discussed shifting capital spending
from natural gas to oil development.
This writer reaffirms his $50 average price for WTI oil in 2019 presented for the smaller independent producers at a briefing at Merrion Oil last December, but beginning early in 2020 forecasts a second half average of $38 per barrel .
In New Mexico, the Governor can adjust the Energy Transition Act basic law next February, but it should be a petroleum-revenue 30 day session without serious oil and gas organized opposition.
New Mexico is now a hybrid Green State with more exportable oil and gas than every OPEC country except Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and yet it will impose the most effective rules for methane capture.
No amount of ad hominem distraction against its policy and leadership will change this direction, and the nation could follow with the outcome of the national election next year.
Daniel Fine is the associate director of New Mexico Tech’s Center for Energy Policy. The opinions expressed are his own.”
LOGOS RESOURCES LLC
Mar 15, 2019, 09:52 ET
The San Juan Basin Energy Conference was founded to provide a forum for exchange of ideas regarding the development of the abundant energy resources found in the region. The theme of this year’s conference is “Looking to the Future”. A recent influx of dynamic oil and gas operators, bringing innovative applications of modern technology to the Gallup sandstone and the Mancos shale formations, promises to restore the San Juan Basin to its place as one of leading basins in the United States.
Regional producers continue to leverage their experiences to apply industry-best practices in efficient implementation of the recently-surging development. The San Juan Basin Energy Conference 2019, sponsored in part by Hilcorp, Whiptail Midstream, and LOGOS Resources II, LLC brings together the basin’s top companies and industry experts to share views on the industry and discuss plans for the future within the San Juan Basin.
Tickets and sponsorship information are available at sanjuanbasin2019.com. Ticket prices are $250/person and sponsorship prices range from $1,000–$10,000. Net proceeds will go to San Juan College’s research park, Four Corners Innovations, Inc.
FOUR CORNERS INNOVATIONS, INC.
DOLORES SILSETH
(505) 566-3402
SILSETHD@4CII.ORG
SOURCE LOGOS RESOURCES LLC
The article by Dr. Daniel Fine is here-> https://www.daily-times.com/story/money/industries/oil-gas/2019/01/27/analysis-things-flat-permian-governor-wants-renewables/2595583002/ The Permian-Delaware Basin rig count should start falling as oil operators, large and small, are flat for 2019.
Spending has been sharply reduced as supply now dominates the A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) used by many commodity traders in oil.
The large or integrated oil companies have all the rigs of 2018 in place for 2019. This would make October the price peak of the latest boom or recovery in oil. Permian-Delaware Basin production would decline at least 500,000 barrels in 2019 to offset the supply glut and stabilize at $50 per barrel.
OPEC members, notably Saudi Arabia, need a fiscal price of oil of $85 per barrel to pay for government and social spending. But at $60 per barrel, cash flow will not make it.
Its new public relations-lobbying in the U.S will require Sovereign Wealth Fund borrowing at market rates, which will be higher mainly because of U.S Senate sanctions over the murder of a Saudi journalist writing for the Washington Post.
This writer forecast a 2019 $50 per barrel average price of oil when prices fell to $43.00 last month.
At the same time, many small and independent producers have break-even at $50 with high-interest debt!
There are Chapter 11 bankruptcies valued at $140 billion from the Panhandle in Texas to the San Juan Basin that resulted from the OPEC -Saudi Arabian price and market share war of 2014-2016 against Southwestern small/independent shale and tight sands producers who now want reparations or damages.
This could hold up financial public relations as state courts hear from local energy banks and their Chapter 11 or equivalent clients.
Saudi Aramco is looking at American LNG investment in the Gulf Coast.
But that would compete against Russian Gazprom export pipeline gas to the European market.
This would confront Russia with Saudi Arabian conflict and threaten Russian-Saudi Arabian accord in OPEC.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has announced a target of 50 percent renewable energy in 10 years. Electricity rate payers would bear the cost. She also placed New Mexico in the Climate Change Treaty Camp. However, if the Democratic Party wins the White House in 2020 there is no doubt that Washington will follow Santa Fe and our new governor.
In the meantime, the new Secretary of Energy Minerals and Natural Resources, Sarah Cottrell Probst, is a world expert in carbon tax architecture to mitigate global warming.
And there could be trade-offs with the super-majors in the Permian-Delaware basins.
The new Administration is expected to create a new energy policy that will replace the effort of ex- Governor Martinez. One issue that did not appear in 2015 was well-density.
The current company-state conflict centers around increased density because of down-spacing in the sub-surface. The opposition is beyond this specific technical capability: it is about more production of oil and carbon in relation to climate change.
What happens in New Mexico will have an impact on regulations in other states and, later, in national energy policy.
This column is an independent analysis by Dr. Daniel Fine, who is the associate director of New Mexico Tech’s Center for Energy Policy and the State of New Mexico Natural Gas Export Coordinator. The opinions expressed are his own.
The full article is here-> Full Article by Dr. Fine
“Unlike 1973, and its oil embargo against the United States, there is no supply threat from the Middle East. Consequently, only a demand unknown moves the price of crude oil. Permian/Delaware has displaced the Middle East as a source and even Mexico imports U.S. production.
This has caused euphoria in Santa Fe among lobbyists who prepare for a new Governor from the Democratic Party.
She will have to decide that the rhetoric of renewable energy is no match for her budget bounty made up of revenue flows from Lea and Eddy Counties. Token demonstrations for higher taxes from oil and gas producers no doubt will occur, but in Santa Fe only the price of oil is the threat that can take the punch off the table.
And here the connected experts publicly answer reporters that the Permian is an exceptionalism in oil and gas: it will never become a basin in a downturn.
However, all the charts and slides converge on upward supply without much on demand to offset the upward slope. It is almost impolite to ask where is the market for the massive supply of oil now and in the near-term future? What about demand for oil?
China? Not quite as electric cars – yes, Tesla or Chinese versions appear as I-Phone-like technology against the combustion engine.
California, with 40 million people and seven states following its waiver, can set miles per gallon requirements on engines towards zero emissions.
This is the meaning of President Trump’s policy to force California back into the Union where Washington decides on what the combustion engine can and will do.
This a decisive battle over Climate Change and the “Resist” (Trump) movement of the Democratic Party.
After all, it is California which pledged to support the Paris Climate Change Treaty which Trump opposed.”