Yet this is not unusual for Big Oil these days. In fact, most are making big bets on natural gas.

Exxon Mobil completed eight projects last year. Seven of them were for natural gas projects — not oil. Of the three scheduled this year, two of them are gas. ConocoPhillips paid $5 billion for Origen, an Australian gas company.

Meanwhile, Chevron hammers away at its mammoth liquefied natural gas plant off the coast of Australia, at a total cost of more than $40 billion. (Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is easier to transport.) Most of the oil giants are also slamming billion-dollar fistfuls to pick up shale gas acreage in places such as the Marcellus in Appalachia.

This shift creates new opportunities for investors. But before we get to those, let’s try to understand what’s happening.

There are several things at work here. One is that new oil deposits, like pitchers who can hit, are becoming harder to find. They are also costlier. The Kashagan oil field, which was supposed to be a great find in the Caspian Sea, is seven years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Another factor at work is that 90% of the world’s oil reserves are in the hands of national oil companies. They are off-limits for the likes of Exxon and others.

By contrast, natural gas deposits are more plentiful. They are also getting cheaper to develop. The cost to build an offshore LNG terminal is about half of what it was only two years ago. The big LNG plants can be just as expensive as anything in the oil world, but — unlike oil — these projects don’t usually go forward unless there are long-term contracts in hand to support them. Some of these contracts go for 20-year terms. This makes the business more appealing to the majors, who don’t have to sweat the huge ups and downs they endure in the oil markets.

With contracts in hand, the gas business is just one of putting together an Erector Set. As The Economist notes, “The gas business is really an infrastructure business: drill wells, build gas plants, install pipelines and accrue profits.”

But there is more. The world’s use of natural gas is growing faster than its use of oil. The IEA’s guess is that oil consumption grows half a percent a year. Natural gas consumption, by contrast, should rise more than 50% in the next 20 years. Total, the big French oil company, is even more bullish. It estimates that China will use much more natural gas than is commonly assumed. Only a lack of infrastructure keeps China’s appetite for natural gas under wraps. But China is in the process of building that infrastructure today. It is only a matter of time before the nat gas markets feel its impact.

Finally, natural gas is cleaner burning. There is a lot of talk of carbon taxes of one kind or another, not only in the U.S., but abroad. I believe it is matter of when, not if, governments punish dirtier fuels. Natural gas will benefit.

However, I don’t expect the price of natural gas to rise in a big way anytime soon. There is simply too much of it. Natural gas producers are all expanding production. Most are spending more to expand production than their cash flow supports. This is happening even though most look like they don’t make any money at $4 nat gas. (A recent survey put the industry average at $5.74.) This doesn’t bode well for the price of natural gas in the short term. As beaten up as it is, it could stay here for a while, or even go lower.

And so we hold only one pure play on natural because it is a low-cost producer with no debt, so it can still create shareholder value in a low-price environment.

Longer term, the current low nat gas price is not sustainable, as most of the industry seems to lose money at these prices. As old contracts (made when natural gas prices were higher) roll off, these producers will start to shut down production.

The following chart shows the cost curve for the lower 48 states in the U.S. These producers need $7 gas to make money. If this is right, then our pure natural gas company in Capital & Crisis will make a lot of money.

This is because logic dictates that we should expect the price of nat gas to gravitate toward the cost of the marginal producers. (And since our company’s costs are under $2, it stands to make a lot of money when gas turns around. I’m content to wait it out…and buy more).

But let’s get back to natural gas in broad terms. Even though pricing looks unexciting in the near term, demand looks healthy long term. The world will burn more natural gas in cars and buses of the future than it does today. It will burn more natural gas to heat and cool homes than it does today. It will rely more on natural gas to provide electricity.

Long-term investors should treat these things as inevitable. Big Oil certainly is. And we are already building the infrastructure to support all of that future growth today. The best way to play this latter trend is in another idea we already own.

Regards,
Chris Mayer
Whiskey & Gunpowder

September 20, 2010

How to Profit When Big Oil Bets on Natural Gas was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Then suddenly a new-found U.S. natural gas producible reserve is suggesting that the U.S. in fact will be self-sufficient or close to it as soon as 2030.

Why are all of these things happening?

A bit of it, of course, is due to the drop in the overall economy, but it has a lot to do with the concept of gas shale, and that’s really what we are going to focus on today.

Where Does All This Gas Come From?

The gas comes from organic matter that is within the rocks. It evolves, bacteria work on it, it generates gas, and most of that gas and oil end up in reservoir rocks, such as the sandstone.

But the rocks with which the organic matter is in the first place, are fine-grained rocks that we use the loose word “shale” for. These are the rocks that have the organic matter that’s cooked, that generates the gas. The gas is generated from the fine-grained rocks and it migrates out into our reservoir rocks, which is our conventional gas production.

If we were to look at the shales in more detail with an electron microscope, you would see that it’s very fine grained and the pores are small. If we look at sandstone, the porosity and permeability (the ability of gas to flow through the rock) is great, and that’s why we can produce it at commercial rates. Traditionally we haven’t been able to produce any gas from shales because there are no pathways for the gas to go out at a very fast rate. Until recently
we’ve pretty much ignored these rocks.

If we blew up the pore in sandstone to the size of the Eiffel Tower – by comparison, the pores in shales are about the size of an eyelet on the compound eye of a bee. In other words, they’re really, really small. There’s a tremendous size/scale difference and that’s why the gas tends to be retained.

The reason that gas migrates out of the rocks is that they’re surrounded by water. All the other pores are filled with water, and because gas or oil is lighter than water, there is a buoyancy effect. It migrates until it’s trapped.

But shales are so fine grained, you don’t need a conventional trapping mechanism. The gas does not move out of these shales because of capillary pressures, and also because the gas is actually absorbed into the mineral and organic surfaces.

That means when we find these shales and these types of deposits, they are not localized. They are very, very laterally extensive, so you don’t really have any exploration risk in terms of finding the shale. The exploration risk is really in whether or not you can develop it.

The economically recoverable gas from the shale is now possible due to development and success of horizontal drilling technology – the development of fracking technology. Higher gas prices in the past gave us the confidence and allowed us to develop the technology. A huge factor is confidence. We know we can do it economically, so we are willing to spend the big dollars that are required to drill and frack one of these wells.

Technology has now made it possible to produce gas from rocks that we couldn’t produce gas economically 10 years ago.

In the past we were drilling more and more wells that produced less and less gas. All of a sudden, things have changed with these shale wells. We are drilling fewer wells, and each well is producing more and more gas – because of the frack technology and the wells being horizontal. Things have changed completely.

Finding and Development Cost

How much it costs to produce the gas, of course, is going to be equivalent to the resource size – the producible resource size. The bottom line is, there’s lots of gas that could be produced at relatively low prices. For example, EnCana’s projection of producible natural gas is absolutely enormous.

What’s Happening in the Rest of the World?

The rocks are a little bit different in North America than everywhere else, but there certainly are similar shales in Europe. North Africa has wonderful-looking shales, and so do a few other places – Eastern Australia, for example. There is no reason to suspect they won’t be equally successful producing gas from tight rocks in those areas, as we have been in North America.

There are certainly lots of gas shale potentials in Europe and many companies like Conoco, Exxon, Shell are there – Shell is drilling some gas shale wells in Sweden, for example. Other companies are working in England.

So all of a sudden we are looking at a world where natural gas is perhaps not in a shortage anymore.

Part of the problem is, we have been a little bit too successful – if you’re a service company, a drilling company, or a producer in North America. We’ve been so successful in finding gas that we’ve driven the price way down. The price, in fact, has been too low to sustain drilling and, in some cases, production.

We’ve got a market, we’ve got demand, and we have supply. U.S. natural gas storage is at a maximum. We’re filled up; no more natural gas, please… for the time being at least.

So What Does It Mean for the Price of Natural Gas?

Since gas prices have taken a major dive, so has the rig count. The rig count is how many rigs are actually drilling. Currently in North America, we’re probably at a 35% to 40% usage of the rigs. This is way down, and the implication is important for the gas price.

Low gas prices means, suddenly we’re drilling a lot fewer gas wells. No one wants to drill anymore.

Currently, in order to maintain U.S. production, we have to add between 17, 18, 19 Bcf (billion cubic feet) additional gas per day. At the current rate of drilling, we’re adding 9 Bcf a day production, so there’s obviously a shortfall.

And a shortfall means eventually the price of gas has to start going up.

Right now, there are a huge number of drillable wells – prospects all ready to be drilled. As soon as the natural gas price gets up above a certain level, these wells will suddenly become economic, and people will start developing them.

So it’s not like we are going to find new “stuff,” we’re just going to start producing the “stuff” we already know exists.

Which Companies Are Going to Lose and
Which Are Going to Win with
the New Metrics of Natural Gas?

Losers:

• Gas-weighted companies are in trouble today.
• Small companies with debt, I think are finished – if they’re gas producers.
• Companies only operating in North America are going to have a tough time. If you’re offshore, you’re probably in a lot better shape.
• Companies with no technical expertise – producing gas from shale requires a team of people who actually understand what they’re doing.

Most small companies just can’t play in that sandbox. When things go bad, they go bad. You have to be able to drill a number of wells successfully to be successful. If you can only drill one well and you have no operational experience, you should just take your wagon and go home. That leads me to the winners.

Winners:

• Big companies with some capital to play with.
• Companies with operational experience, or companies that have the depth to develop that operational experience.
• Companies with early land position and low finding and development costs or finding and exploration costs.
• Technically competent companies.
• Small companies who have decent land and have big-company partners.

Some small companies got an early land position, opening the door for big companies to farm in on them. These are perfect situations. The big company is paying the load, and the small company will still get the advantage.

My Prediction for Gas Prices

In my opinion, gas will be $6 or $7 next year. Prices will then soften down to $4 or $5 at the end of next year. Ultimately, the best buys for investors will be small-caps that are farmed out or big companies that have long-term positions.

Regards,
Dr. Marc Bustin
Casey Energy Opportunities

December 9, 2009

The Future of America’s Natural Gas was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The year was 1959. The geologists were in the Netherlands, near a small town named Groningen, at the southern edge of the North Sea. They worked for Shell and Esso (now Exxon Mobil) and were drilling a well. Instead of oil, however, the drill bored into a massive deposit of natural gas. All that hard work and expense for a disappointing find of natural gas.

But the politicians of Europe weren’t so disappointed. They soon sat up and took notice, because…

With further drilling near Groningen, it became clear that the Dutch gas field was gigantic. We now know that in its early days, the Groningen field was the largest gas field in Europe. In fact, it was one of the largest gas fields ever discovered anywhere in the world, holding over 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Today, that would be enough gas to supply the entire U.S. natural gas market for almost five years. Back in 1959, it was enough gas to last the Netherlands more than a century. Indeed, the gas of Groningen paid for much of the economic development of the Netherlands in the 1960s, turning a relatively poor nation into one of the wealthiest nations in Europe.

Furthermore, the geologic evidence from Groningen was enticing. The rock that held the gas was sandstone, but not just any sandstone. This rock was deposited in an ancient desert. The rock cores and seismic work actually showed the giant sand dune structures. And based on the regional structure, it looked like the sand dunes extended far out beneath the then-unknown North Sea. Was there more energy wealth out beneath those choppy waters? A great race was on.

Nations Staked Their Claims to Subsea Riches

Almost immediately, the nations bordering the North Sea began a complex legal process of claiming and allocating the mineral rights beneath the rough waters offshore. In keeping with their historically assertive Viking heritage, the Norwegians were in the forefront.

By the early 1960s, Norway struck agreements with the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. And the boundary agreement that Norway struck governed the economic and industrial fate of that nation for the rest of the 20th century. In fact, the North Sea boundary division will probably control Norway’s fate for several centuries into the future.

The North Sea Made Norway Wealthy

That division of the North Sea in the early 1960s turned Norway from an economic backwater into one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

But just owning hydrocarbon deposits beneath hundreds of feet of water, and thousands of feet of rock, is not enough. You have to be able to exploit your riches. And that’s what happened in Norway. It’s quite a tale, and better yet, it’s something in which we can invest.

The Explorers Arrived and Found Texas (Three Times)

By 1966, the world’s oil explorers were arriving in Norway. They were looking for oil, and the North Sea is a big place to search. Norway’s territorial waters, including the Barents Sea in the north, cover an area about three times the size of Texas.

Everyone who understood the challenge knew how tough the exploration job was going to be. According to a historical account published by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, people in and out of industry described the North Sea as “the world’s harshest exploration area for oil and gas.”

The development of Norway’s oil riches involved considerable trial and error. At every step, people had to adapt exploration concepts, seagoing platforms, drilling equipment and production facilities to the challenging environment of the North Sea. By 1971, the first barrels of oil flowed to the surface of a massive steel and concrete platform called Ekofisk, operated by Phillips Petroleum and located entirely within the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. The Ekofisk complex is still producing oil today, almost 40 years later.

North Sea Technology Laboratory – for the Chosen Few

The North Sea quickly acquired a reputation as a laboratory for developing offshore oil and gas technology. The big difference between large land-based projects and offshore development is that the offshore installations are hidden from people by the sea. Only the chosen few who build and work on the platforms can truly experience how far the boundaries of technology have been stretched to pump oil and gas from the depths beneath the ocean.

Initially, the equipment and know-how for offshore development came from outside Norway. But over time, Norway built up competencies and technologies adapted to the special conditions of its continental shelf. The linchpin of North Sea development was technology to build massive structures called “Condeep platforms.” These are the gargantuan steel and concrete production platforms that, if placed beside the world’s largest and best-known buildings, would dwarf the Eiffel Tower and even the Empire State Building.

Until we meet again,
Byron King

June 15, 2009

Black Gold of the North Sea was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.