Henry Hub Rises Thanks in Part to Gas Flowing to Freeport LNG
Have you noticed? The NYMEX price of natural gas has been on an upward trend over the past week or so. We’ve actually broken the $2 barrier, and it continues to climb. Which begs the question, why? There are typically a number of factors combined to drive the price. This time around, we think we can boil it down to a classic economics principle — there’s more demand and less supply. The demand is coming from the problem-plagued Freeport LNG facility, which is rockin’ and rollin’ once again. Lower supply is coming from fewer natgas drilling rigs in operation.
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Dominion Energy wants to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Person County, North Carolina, to enhance natural gas service reliability for residential and business customers in the growing region (see 
According to S&P Global and its crack statistics unit, U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, mostly propane) exports both hit new all-time record highs for the period of Jan. 1 through April 29 this year. And that’s despite the fact that the Freeport LNG export facility has experienced a major outage since January. And speaking of the problem-plagued Freeport facility, one of its three trains, Train 3, received around 830 MMcf of natural gas yesterday. Meaning it’s back online. Finally. Up down, up down, up down. Now, up again.
According to a Bloomberg article, Venture Global LNG Inc. expects to begin production at its second liquefied natural gas export facility in Louisiana in mid-2024. The new facility is called Plaquemines LNG, located in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, approximately 20 miles south of New Orleans. Venture Global has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to import up to three LNG cargoes to test the facility before it’s ready to go. But then, will Venture Global claim it’s not ready for another 2+ years as they have with its first facility, the Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Cameron Parish, Louisiana?
Two days ago, MDN reported that an LNG cargo vessel had left the Freeport LNG dock partially loaded (see 
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (100% focused on the Marcellus/Utica), released its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The company produced 5.87 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas in 1Q. Executives said they will continue the current curtailment (reduction) of 1 Bcf/d, in place since late February, until at least the end of May. A major focus of CEO Toby Rice’s comments is the coming demand for natgas from gas-fired power plants in the Southeastern U.S. Among the bigger pieces of news is that once EQT buys out and merges back in Equitrans (which it used to own), EQT plans to expand the Equitrans-owned Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) by another 0.5 Bcf/d.
CNX Resources has partnered with NuBlu Energy, an EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) company, to introduce two exciting new solutions that use Marcellus/Utica gas — one solution for CNG (compressed natural gas) and the other for LNG (liquefied natural gas). The solutions are called ZeroHP CNG and Clean mLNG. Zero Horsepower (ZeroHP) CNG creates a decentralized CNG production market to meet better the growing demand for clean, affordable CNG energy. ZeroHP CNG eliminates the need for compressors to compress the CNG. How cool is that? As for LNG, a new low horsepower solution called Clean mLNG™ advances cost-effective and lower emissions production of small-scale LNG. We’re talking micro-scale LNG, making LNG available for just about anyone to use.
Things may finally be turning around for the problem-plagued Freeport LNG export facility located in Quintana, Texas. Last week we reported gas flows to the facility had dropped to “near zero” for at least five days in a row (see 
Berkeley Research Group (BRG) published a very important new study yesterday that has Big Green tied up in knots. The study, “Comparative GHG Footprint Analysis for European and Asian Supplies of USLNG, Pipeline Gas, and Coal” (full copy below), analyzes methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across leading fuel supply chains for power generation in 13 European and Asian end markets. The study has been under development since 2021. It uses a “bottom-up methodology” to arrive at a comprehensive comparison of the emissions intensity of the primary fuel sources, as well as continuously updated data from numerous sources. It’s far more rigorous and reliable than the typical Big Green propaganda that relies on aggregated emissions information to develop general theoretical conclusions. This is real science.
The EIA says the U.S. natural gas trade will continue to grow with the startup of new LNG export projects. In a Today in Energy post, the EIA says (based on its recent Short-Term Energy Outlook report) that it expects U.S. LNG exports will increase just 2% this year over last year. However, in 2025, LNG exports will soar by 18% due to three new LNG export facilities currently under construction that will come online next year.
From time to time, so-called experts will come out of the woodwork to proclaim that burning coal is better for the environment than burning natural gas. Cornell professors Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea (Ingraffea is now retired) attempted to make that case back in 2011 (see