Canadian natural gas exports are holding firm — and even growing slightly — despite persistently weak prices and competition in the United States from shale gas production.

Pipeline deliveries into the United States from Canada during the first half of this year hit 1.66 Tcf, show trade records kept by the National Energy Board (NEB). The total was up by 4% from 1.6 Tcf in January through June of 2010.

The average price fetched by Canadian gas at the international border dropped by 15% in first-half 2011 to C$4.02/gigajoule (GJ) (US$4.22/MMBtu). The Dollar and Loonie are at par, but 1 MMBtu is 5% more than 1 GJ from C$4.71/GJ (US$4.94/MMBtu) in the same period of 2010.

All the vital signs for the Canada-U.S. gas trade remain well below the performance peaks hit in the first decade of the 21st Century. Even if Canadian export volumes continue to hold up for the rest of the year, the projected 2011 total of 3.3 Tcf will still be below the record of 3.8 Tcf set in 2007.

The price of Canadian gas at the U.S. border is 55% less than the record annual average of C$8.89/GJ (US$9.33/MMBtu) set in 2005.

Canadian gas export revenues also peaked in 2005 at C$35.574 billion for the year. As of 2010, the annual total value of Canadian pipeline deliveries into the U.S. shriveled by 57% to C$15.15 billion. But even the lowered volume, price and revenue performances of the last six years leave the size of the Canada-U.S. gas trade well above its scale in the last two decades of the 20th Century.

At the 1985 onset of continental energy deregulation and free trade, annual Canadian exports to the United States were 928 Bcf. Prices averaged C$4.06/GJ (US$4.26/MMBtu). Export revenues were C$4 billion.

In the first half of this year, Canadian exports only scored noticeable increases in one U.S. destination: the Midwest, where volumes were 821 Bcf compared to 722 Bcf in January through June of 2010.

Canadian pipeline deliveries to California slipped to 203.4 Bcf during the first six months of 2011 from 252 Bcf in the same period of 2010.

In the U.S. Pacific Northwest Canadian gas made a marginal gain with January-June 2011 sales of 281 Bcf improving slightly on exports of 265 Bcf in first-half 2010.

But Canadian pipeline deliveries to the U.S. Northeast slipped to 347 Bcf during the first six months of this year from 391 Bcf in the same period of 2010.

Despite repeated forecasts of shrinkage by industry and government analysts including the NEB, total Canadian gas production shows no signs of withering at the moment.

At the same time as the NEB’s trade records registered a modest increase in exports, Statistics Canada’s count of domestic consumption also rose.

This June, total gas sales in Canada rose 4% to 156 Bcf from 150.8 Bcf in the same month of 2010. All the increased consumption was in the industrial sector, where the main growth driver remains gas use by Alberta thermal oilsands projects.

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