EU gas: Right now & hear, #Gazprom uses gas export as political weapon. It books but does not use; bookings became useless indicator of what might flow in pipes. Latest: even NS flows reduce.
So far, EU compensated with warmer weather & LNG, as illustrated below.
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Last month, Gazprom booked 21% of Mallnow’s (GER entry from PL) capacity for Jan, yet there have been no flows. In Dec, the company used daily pipe allocations for that route after opting against booking capacity for the whole month. Nor do Flows enter Poland (from BL).
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On the Ukrainian route, some capacity was booked on Monday for gas shipments to Slovakia via Velke Kapusany border point for Feb. Yet, current flows through that station, even though an extra booking was also made for this month, are a fraction of contractual volumes.
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Where it gets disturbing is the recent noticeable drop for contractual flows to Germany via Nord Stream. They never dropped in Jan since the pipe’s capacity is in full use for past 5 years!
The EU is in a gas crisis, the details of which we explained in various threads on this channel.
Ironically however, the liberalisation of the European gas markets is a huge success story. A brief history & some present day observations on gas security (#Gazprom).
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With the liberalisation of EU gas & electricity markets in 1998, in theory consumers were able to freely choose their supplier & shop for the best deal. However, most households and businesses still lacked a real choice of supplier well into 2014. Why?
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A Commission inquiry into the energy sector, published in February 2006, identified a number of "serious malfunctions" in the market as most countries maintained their local monopolies.
Starting on 22 December, European gas prices experienced - shall we say - a bit of a "rug pull". Within 10 days they crashed by 60%. Is the gas crisis over?
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TTF (EU equ. of US price Henry Hub) crashed from a record $59/MMBtu down to $23/MMBtu within 10 days. Today, the price is back at $29 (left axis; $168/boe) or >7x (!) the price US consumers pay for their heating bill.
So no, the crisis is hardly "over". It gets worse.
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Why did TTF (or it's UK equ. NBP) come crashing down in late December? Chiefly b/c Europe had an unusually warm weather patch. Warm weather meant less gas withdrawals.
Copper - the metal that conducts electricity & heat best - is high in demand & short in supply.
Yet, the macro concern is all about China's property slowdown.
Let's give a go at that. Short thread
First, what is copper used (not "consumed", but "used" in durable goods & recycled thereafter) for?
Answer: for everything. But "building construction" is 28% of global copper use. Likely 50% of that is China construction related (hard to precise), say 4.1mtpa.
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Of those 4.1mtpa however, a part is infrastructure construction related, which China does not slow down for now. Say, "building construction" related is 2-3mtpa - an unknown known.
As the news that Kuwait may struggle to keep its oil output in the coming years, we like to explain some facts on "Base Declines". Kuwait is said to have 3.2mbpd capacity & produces 2.5mbpd in Oct 2021.
Kuwait is major, not minor for the market.
First, think of a conventional oil fields like a "normal distribution" or, after its mathematician, a "Gauss curve". As a field starts producing hydrocarbons, its production is stable or increases (with reservoir pressure & wells No) bf it enters in a "permanent decline".
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Take the Cantarell offshore field in Mexico, one of a few "giant" conventional oil fields ever to be discovered. Do you see the "Gauss" curve below? In May 2021, Cantarell was down to 90kbpd, a fraction of its 2mbpd peak production in 2004.