Featured Articles
| Friday Feb 5, 2016 | |
| With warmer weather looming and natural gas production ticking up due to increases in the Marcellus/Utica region, the front of the curve has shifted down quite a bit over the past week with the March contract going from $2.30 last Friday to settling at $1.972 this Thursday. Breaking down the weekly information in a little more detail, here are the key drivers for such a move: Weather | As we walked out the door last Friday, the March contract pushed up to $2.30 as the forecasts were calling for some arctic air to move down into the Midwest and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 4, 2016 | |
| We have been watching SoCal closely this week as colder temperatures swept across the West of the United States. While the forecasts were by no means extraordinary, we did have our eyebrows raised as it appeared the SoCal gas system going to be tight considering the daily average temperatures that were in the forecast warranted roughly 4 BCF of Sendouts in SoCal Gas's system The risk was twofold: First, withdrawals at Aliso Canyon had been limited as they entered into the 4th stage of the relief well drilling task to stop the leak in one of the wells. » read more | |
| Wednesday Feb 3, 2016 | |
| With front month contract trading below three dollar per mmbtu for a year now (as of yesterday, it is currently sitting at the $2.00 mark), it is not surprising to see gas drilling count taking another plunge. Gas drilling rig count in the US dropped to a new 5-year low of 121 count this past Friday. That is a 195 drop in gas rig count in just an year! Figure 1 | Natural Gas Drilling Rig Count in the United States, Year-on-Year Comparison The year-on-year drop is taking place across every shale. The largest decline is in Marcellus, followed by Haynesville, the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 2, 2016 | |
| The Columbia River and aluminum smelting have been inextricably linked since the 1940’s. In December 1939, BPA signed a contract with Alcoa to provide 32.5 MW of power to its smelter in Vancouver, Washington. Other aluminum smelters were soon constructed throughout the Northwest, providing vital material for the war effort and bringing industry and jobs to many corners of the region. Boeing was busy building warplanes and was a primary customer of Northwest smelters during World War II. It has been estimated that electricity from Grand Coulee Dam alone ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 1, 2016 | |
| Saturday's CAISO auction clear gave us a glimpse of what might be in store come Q2 as load was down, solar was strong, in-state wind spiked and imports from the Pacific Northwest were plentiful now that the DC intertie is back in the mix. As a result, congestion on Path 15 showed up south to north as the excess MW tried to find a home. Figure 1 | Congestion on Path 15 S to N - 1/30/2016 As you can see in Figure 1, the bottleneck showed up between HE 10 and HE 15, which is right in the heart of the solar profile reaching its peak. Breaking it down, HE 7-12 ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 29, 2016 | |
| Earlier this week we sent out a newsletter stating how the Pacific Northwest grid was going to be getting longer, well those days are upon us as load has shifted down due to above normal temperatures moving through the West. This has shifted the overall power load profile down across the majority of balancing authorities as well as heating demand. Figure 1 | Actual vs/ Forecast Weather - West Cities Up in the Pacific Northwest, the warmer weather impacted the supply side as well, specifically the hydro bucket where any precipitation was in the form of rain ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 28, 2016 | |
| As of early December 2015, the NYISO started releasing the real-time supply stack fuel mix. This is similar data to what other ISO’s such as CAISO, MISO, SPP and NEPOOL release on a daily basis. This information is pertinent as it tells us how much of each generation type is running. Below is a breakout of the NYISO supply component’s capacity and the respective percentage to the overall total capacity. Figure 1| NYISO 2015 Supply Stack Capacity - Gen Type For those of you unfamiliar with NYISO two things will jump out at you. » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 27, 2016 | |
| Over the past week or so, the Pacific Northwest's hydro system has been kicking out more MW's than earlier in the month. This is due to the fact that the recent precipitation West of the Cascades (rain) and warmer weather have increased the overall side flows on the Lower Columbia and Westside. Figure 1 | Side Flows - Lower Columbia/Snake Add to it, the fact that the Canadian flows out of International Boundary have picked up once again and Grand Coulee's inflows are averaging triple digits over the past two days. Figure 2 | EnergyGPS Short Term Hydro ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 26, 2016 | |
| There had been talks of production drop this year due to producers’ hedges rolling off. While that is a plausible theory, recent pipeline nominations have not show the effect of hedges rolling off, at least, not yet. Production level has been strong in Lower Marcellus (Figure 1), which includes southwest Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. As you can see, the Lower Marcellus showed a year-on-year increase of +2.9bcf/d, a month-on-month increase of +0.3 bcf/d for January. Figure 1 | Lower Marcellus Production 7 Day Average ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 25, 2016 | |
| With January almost in the books, I thought it would be good to take a quick look at how the California water situation is shaping up for this upcoming Spring/Summer. First, the El Nino year that was to be expected is bring plenty of rain to the state, it just happens to be hitting in the Northern part of the state so far, which is good since that is where most of the hydro facilities sit anyway. Figure 1 | Northern California Snow Water Equivalent - North As you can see in Figure 1, the red line is showing a pretty good slope over the past two weeks as ... » read more | |
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