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An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

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Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#91
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of the year where it is cold does not start on the shortest day of the year. There is the part of the year that is cold and there’s the part of the year between the shortest day of the year and the equinox, both are winter. Winter doesn’t mean a lot in mild places where you can wear a tshirt out most days of the year. Where it snows, winter is more or less the time of the year where it snows. People need to…

In a sense, the astronomical definition of winter has a lot more meaning in a connected world. I grew up in a part of Canada where the (colloquial) winter started at the end of October and ended at the end of March. I now live in a part of the country where it starts in late December and runs until the end of April. If you're trying to convey time by saying that something happened last winter, different people are go…

Different places have different seasons. Some places have monsoon season, parts of New England have mud season. Referring to a time period based on what the weather is like for a significant portion of the year makes sense when that is a relevant part of the comparison.

Winter official definition is basically “astronomical Q1” which honestly isn’t all that useful in most cases. (It’s a bit stupid that our months, major holidays, and year almost but not quite align with the astronomical milestones).

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#92
The orginal tweet from @Lithium_Plays was here: https://twitter.com/Lithium_Plays/status/1591077653595181056

A screenshot is here: https://twitter.com/DrJackLomax/status/1591194534662533120

The screenshot does not show a Twitter Blue not-verified checkmark on it, so this may not be related to this week's Musk Twitter product debacle.

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#93
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin has plenty of interest in sabotaging the pipelines. If the pipelines are destroyed, one cannot kill Putin, take over, and sell gas to europe again to be rich. The US would suffer an incredible risk if it ever came out that they intentionally sabotaged European energy supplies to such a scale.

There was zero blowback last time the US blew up Russian pipelines. It was the largest non-nuclear, man-made explosion / fire to date though -- all achieved in 1982 via a software supply chain attack: https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2022/09/29/reagan-approve... Interestingly, the three simultaneous ruptures of two pipelines look a lot like what happened 40 years ago. It wouldn't surprise me if a shoden-wielding sc…

That's questionable. From wiki [0]:

"A report in the Moscow Times quoted KGB veteran Vasily Pchelintsev as saying that there was a natural gas pipeline explosion in 1982, but it was near Tobolsk on a pipeline connecting the Urengoy gas field to the city of Chelyabinsk, and it was caused by poor construction rather than sabotage; according to Pchelintsev's account, no one was killed in the explosion and the damage was repaired within one day. Reed's account has also not been corroborated by intelligence agencies in the United States.

Another point of criticism of the sabotage allegations is that, according to Prof. V. D. Zakhmatov, an explosion safety expert who has overseen the safety measures on many of the Soviet oil and gas pipelines built in the 1980s, at the described timeframe Soviet Union simply didn't practice digital control of its pipeline system. Most of the control was manual, and whatever automation was used utilized the analog control systems, most of which worked through pneumatics."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When operational, this facility consumes billions of cubic feet of natural gas [1]. They take gas make it liquid, put it on a boat, ship it. If they have cracked pipes, they are less likely to reopen. Not reopening, not going to consume the gas. Less demand for gas. Price drops. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52859

The fact that one is unable to buy gas does not mean demand for gas has fallen.

The fact that the plant will be unable to buy gas for longer than anticipated should reduce the expected demand for gas. Less demand for gas, lower price for gas.

People were pricing gas on some expectation of this plant opening and consuming at some point in the future. If that's pushed back, the price should drop.

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#96
post #7

Can someone explain why the rumor of cracked pipes and delayed restart of a terminal would cause the futures price to go down? I would think that news of a supply constraint would cause the price to go up. TIA

Gas storage is fairly limited and near capacity. Production of Gas is incidental to oil drilling, so "keeping it in the ground" would require keeping the more valuable oil in the ground and is unlikely to happen. One sink for it (this terminal) is reduced. Since there is now less demand but a constant supply, prices should go down.

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#97
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terminal is for exports from the US (particularly to Europe), and the futures contracts are on US gas prices. Europe desperately needs gas this winter. Markets are pricing in the assumption that the US producers will get great prices from European consumers this winter. If US gas can't get to Europe then the US can't sell that gas at high prices in Europe. Also, additionally, the domestic market will be flooded i…

whats interesting to consider is that while russia had no interest in sabotaging their nordstream pipelines, the US absolutely did. conversely russia has great interest in fouling up the gas markets the US relies upon to profit from russias curious energy export misfortunes.

Whoever sabotaged nordstream handily left one pipeline undamaged which can be used to send massive amounts of natural gas to Europe.

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#99
Historical natural gas use in Europe from 2014-2020 (Figure 1), by month:

https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

Does seem to track weather fairly closely, i.e. there was a big spike in natural gas demand in Jan 2017 in that figure, correlating with a cold snap:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2017_European_cold_wav...

However, anyone claiming that they can predict European Jan weather based on European Oct weather is not to be trusted. Such long-term weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable, and the noise in the global warming trend is high enough that you really only clearly see the warming trend by taking a 5-10 year running average, depending on location.

Re: An unconfirmed tweet about Freeport LNG is upending gas markets

#100
post #80

$8chan at its finest. Who knew deregulation would create so much chaos?

Are you argue for regulation for … it does not help actually and worsen it.

I think you're trying to use the example of poorly regulated things to show that regulation is bad. I think there's a college word for why that's a bad argument, but I don't know what it is. Anyway, yeah, Prohibition in the U.S. was a bad regulation, but taking lead out of water pipes, gasoline, and paint were good regulations. For any bad regulation you can think of, I can find at least ten good regulations.
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