Brazil

A potential natural gas pipeline hooking up Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale formation to southern Brazil will cost about $5 billion and “pose financial challenges,” according to Buenos Aires-based Wood Mackenzie. “Southern Brazil remains the most attractive regional market for potential excess gas production from Argentina,” Wood Mackenzie principal Ignacio Rooney told NGI’s Shale Daily. However,…

BP plc, long North America’s largest natural gas marketer, as well as one of the biggest global natural gas and oil, in recent days has turned its attention to bulking up its alternative fuels portfolio.

At recent commodity prices, Lower 48 natural gas production will zoom past 100 Bcf/d over the next five years, leading to an oversupply that will drive down prices in the volatile Western spot markets as exports out of the Gulf Coast pace demand growth, according to RBN Energy LLC.

CEO Roberto Castello Branco of Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) at his recent swearing-in ceremony said the state-owned energy giant needs to divest natural gas assets and end its domination of the gas supply chain to increase the number of participants in the market.

In January, when constraints sent natural gas prices skyrocketing during the “bomb cyclone” in the Northeast, the lack of pipeline capacity destroyed as much as 4 Bcf/d of demand as more coal and fuel oil entered the market, according to RBN Energy’s David Braziel, who directs finance and fundamental analysis.

Worldwide offshore oil and natural gas discoveries reached slightly below 2.3 billion boe last year, which was almost 90% lower than the resources uncovered in 2010, Rystad Energy said Wednesday.

Global offshore oil production, including lease condensate and hydrocarbon natural gas liquids, last year reached its highest level in 16 years and accounted for almost 30% of worldwide output, with the United States one of the leaders, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The need for more takeaway capacity out of the Marcellus and Utica shales has become a common refrain, but with a long list of projects on tap the Northeast could be headed for a pipeline overbuild, according to RBN Energy LLC President Rusty Braziel.

A cascading set of circumstances, brought about in large part by American ingenuity, led to the unconventional natural gas and oil revolution, which in turn has created a new world order for energy markets, according to industry guru Rusty Braziel.