LNG

The official start of the Atlantic Hurricane season is still three months away but forecasters say it’s never too early to start preparing for what may or may not come in 2024, especially along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said it would purchase smaller market rival Southwestern Energy Co. for $7.4 billion in an all-stock transaction creating a $24Bln company that will be the nation’s largest natural gas producer.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Southwestern Energy Co., two companies that helped enable the start of US liquefied natural gas exports by providing low-priced feed-gas, are reported to be on the verge of a merger deal as early as this week to create a $16.7 billion company that would be the nation’s largest natural gas producer.

Jan 3 (LNGJ) - Williams, a leading US natural gas pipelines operator with projects aimed at boosting feed-gas supplies for Gulf Coast LNG plants, has priced a public offering of 2.1 billion in Senior Notes, a type of bond that takes precedence over other debts. The offering of $1.1Bln of its 4.900 percent Senior Notes due 2029 was at a price of 99.839 percent of par and $1.0 Bln of its 5.150 percent Senior Notes due in 2034 were priced at 99.975 percent of par.

   “The expected settlement date for the offering is January 5, 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions,” said Williams, which is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Williams intends to use the net proceeds of the offering for general corporate purposes, which may include the repayment of our outstanding commercial paper notes or other near-term debt maturities,” it added. The joint book-running managers of the offering were named as Barclays Capital, Citigroup Global Markets, Truist Securities and Wells Fargo Securities.

Williams Companies, a leading US natural gas pipelines operator with projects aimed at boosting feed-gas supplies for Gulf Coast LNG export plants, has reached an agreement to acquire a portfolio of natural gas storage assets from an affiliate of Hartree Partners LP for $1.95 billion.

Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI), the leading US pipeline feed-gas company for liquefied natural gas plants and a key energy infrastructure developer, reported lower second-quarter net profits amid steady cash flow as it responded to volatile market conditions.

The company said profits declined to $586 million during the three months to the end of June from $635M in the second quarter of 2022.

“The KMI board and management team are fully committed to the use of our strong cash flow to benefit our shareholders,” said Executive Chairman Richard D. Kinder.

“We focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet while internally funding capital projects that produce returns well in excess of our cost of capital - including projects that are part of the ongoing energy evolution,” the Chairman stated,

KMI’s distributable cash flow amounted to $1.07 billion compared with $1.17Bln in the prior-year quarter.

Asset values

“KMI once again saw the value of its existing natural gas transportation and storage assets that are able to respond to volatile market conditions caused by extreme weather events and an increasingly intermittent resource-based electric grid,” said Chief Executive Steve Kean.

“Our 700 billion cubic feet of operated natural gas storage capacity is particularly useful in back-stopping intermittent renewable electricity resources,” Kean explained.

“Financial contributions from the Natural Gas Pipeline business segment were up relative to the second quarter of 2022 and ahead of budget,” added the CEO.

“Our Terminals business segment also over-performed relative to both the second quarter of 2022 and budget,” stated Kean.

KMI President Kim Dang said that the performance of the Natural Gas Pipelines business improved in the second quarter of 2023 versus the prior-year quarter.

Dang cited higher contributions from Midcontinent Express Pipeline, the Texas Intrastate system, El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG), the Stagecoach asset and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP), partially offset by lower contributions from the company's Eagle Ford gathering system assets.

Natural gas transport volumes were up 5 percent year-over-year, primarily from increases on EPNG due to returning a pipeline to service and the retirement of a coal-fired power plant.

Texas Intrastate

KMI said that the Texas Intrastate system benefited from a variety of existing shippers and new contracts, partially offset by reduced volumes on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline.

“Natural gas gathering volumes were up 19 percent from the second quarter of 2022 across most of our systems,” Dang explained. 

Among several new projects, KMI said that the two-phase $678M Evangeline Pass venture will include modifications and enhancements to portions of the TGP and Southern Natural Gas systems in Mississippi and Louisiana, enabling the delivery of the full FERC-certificated project volumes to Venture Global’s proposed Plaquemines LNG facility.

“Construction activities are underway for phase 1 of the project, which includes general operational upgrades enabling TGP to provide approximately 900 million cubic feet per day of natural gas transportation capacity to Venture Global’s facility,” said KMI.

Dang added that contributions from the Products Pipelines business segment were down compared with the second quarter of 2022, saying this was largely due to the impact in the prior-year period of sharply rising commodity prices.

“The crude and condensate business was also impacted by lower re-contracting rates in the Eagle Ford. Total refined products volumes were relatively flat compared to the second quarter of 2022,” Dang said.

TC Energy Corp., the North American natural gas and energy pipelines company, has received permission from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to bring a pipeline expansion into service for deliveries to Mexico, including feed gas for liquefied natural gas exports.

EQT Corp., one of the leading US natural gas producers, reported a swing to first-quarter net profits as it reported improved average realised prices amid high cash flow from operations in the Appalachia shale-gas basins following the 2022 first-quarter losses that were caused by derivatives and tax impacts.

The $1.5-billion US Driftwood Pipeline project comprising two feed-gas lines for the liquefied natural gas export plant in Louisiana has been formally approved by regulators.

Tellurian, the Driftwood project developer, said in a statement that the pipelines, known as Line 200 and Line 300, would be constructed in Beauregard Parish and Calcasieu Parish in the Gulf Coast state.

The Houston, Texas-based company, said the pipelines would be capable of delivering up to 5.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.

Tellurian said the pipelines would have “virtually no emissions” due to the implementation of electric-powered Integrated Compressor Line (ICL) technology from US energy technology and services company Baker Hughes.

The company said the permits were awarded by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on April 21.

Bechtel contract

Leading US LNG engineering company Bechtel Energy has already been given limited notice to proceed with construction of Phase One of the Driftwood liquefaction plant.

The Tellurian project involves constructing 20 mid-scale processing Trains, each with 1.38 MTPA of capacity and built as five blocks of four Trains.

The Phase One development would include the first two of these blocks with 11 MTPA of output and two of three planned 235,000 cubic metres storage tanks and the first of three planned loading berths for LNG carriers.

“Tellurian thanks the FERC for their thorough and collaborative review of our Driftwood Pipeline Project and we look forward to delivering natural gas in a cleaner and highly reliable way to Southwest Louisiana,” said Tellurian President and Chief Executive Octávio Simões.

Earlier in April, Tellurian signed an accord to sell the site of the Driftwood plant near Lake Charles to New York-based institutional investors.

Tellurian said that the sale and lease back deal had been the subject of a binding letter of intent for the 800 acres of land owned by Tellurian’s subsidiary, Driftwood LNG LLC.

Master lease

The agreement will see Tellurian receiving $1 billion for the land and a lease.

“It will consist of the sale by Driftwood LNG and purchase by a special purpose entity to be formed by the investor of Driftwood LNG’s interests in the property for $1.0Bln pursuant to a purchase and sale agreement,” said Tellurian.

On the closing of the transaction a 40-year lease of the property from the purchaser to Driftwood LNG will be signed in the form of a master lease.

There is also a requirement that the equity investors in Driftwood LNG become joint and contingent guarantors of the master lease.

Pioneer Natural Resources, the biggest Texas oil producer and the largest acreage holder in the oil and gas-rich Permian Basin of the southwest US, reported fourth-quarter profits that were better than expected and said it would push ahead with drilling, completions, facilities and water infrastructure spending of up to $4.75 billion in 2023.