{"id":13062,"date":"2015-10-06T06:20:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T11:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13062"},"modified":"2015-10-06T06:20:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T11:20:55","slug":"six-reasons-natural-gas-prices-are-staying-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13062","title":{"rendered":"Six Reasons Natural Gas Prices Are Staying Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six Reasons Natural Gas Prices Are Staying Down<\/a><\/h3>\n
The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine,\u00a0reached a supply agreement in<\/a>\u00a0the last week of September with the EU\u2019s largest fuel supply partner: Russia.<\/div>\n
\n

One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure than ever before, a sharp contrast to the icy winters of 2006 and 2009, in which Russia cut off natural gas supply to Eastern Europe over a conflict with the Ukraine. The following factors have turned the European natural gas market from a \u2018\u2019beggars can\u2019t be choosers\u201d into a true \u201cbuyers\u2019 market\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

1. Declining European demand<\/strong><\/p>\n

In spite of the current surge in natural gas imports from Russia, Norway and Qatar (described in point 4 below), the IEA\u00a0foresees<\/a>\u00a0a decline in European demand for natural gas because of a decline in \u2019thermal generation growth,\u2019\u00a0increased energy efficiency<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0shift to renewables<\/a>. Natural gas demand could, however, be partially rescued by a colder than expected winter or the accelerated shutdown of coal-fired electricity plants. The below chart demonstrates the fall in natural gas demand across the EU.<\/p>\n

\"EuropeanDemand\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Click to enlarge)<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0The Shocking Truth Behind Mexico\u2019s Recent Offshore Oil Auction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

2. Better connected networks<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the 2006 and\u00a02009<\/a>\u00a0natural gas supply disruptions, the European Union decided to decrease its natural gas import dependence from Russia (ironically enough, natural gas imports from Russia are surging at the time of writing. More on that below) by improving its natural gas infrastructure. Ever since, over\u00a0\u20ac50 billion<\/a>\u00a0(\u2248U.S$55.8) was invested in 107 gas projects with one important goal: sharing energy resources. This sharing of energy resources can potentially limit the direct demand for natural gas on the short-term and therefore prevent a quick hike in natural gas prices.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six Reasons Natural Gas Prices Are Staying Down The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine,\u00a0reached a supply agreement in\u00a0the last week of September with the EU\u2019s largest fuel supply partner: Russia. One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[1851,279,284,554,5510],"class_list":["post-13062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-commodity-price-collapse","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-natural-gas","tag-washingtons-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13063,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062\/revisions\/13063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}