Welcome! Houston-based Zeus Development Corp is a 20-year-old research firm that offers comprehensive market intelligence in four areas: 1) LNG world trade, 2) LNG fuels, 3) upstream gas fields, and 4) gasification. This website provides current news, reports, statistics and forecasts of infrastructure investment, costs, prices, project and gas-field profiles, competitor experience lists, among other information.
As exporters divert cargos from U.S. to spot Asian markets, average voyage distances have climbed, causing a shortage of ships and benefiting carrier fleet valuations. In 2011, U.S. LNG imports fell to levels not seen since 2002. This has prompted exporters, such as Atlantic LNG (Trinidad), Nigeria LNG, Equatorial Guinea, and Egypt, to divert U.S. cargos into a wide range spot buyers, especially in Asia, raising the average voyage distance by 1,500 nautical miles from 3,000 in 2007 to 4,500 in 2011. The bad news for investors in LNG carrier fleets like Golar LNG (NASDAQ:GLNG), Teekay LNG (NYSE:TGP), and Hoegh LNG (Oslo:HLNG) is that this trend has nearly run its course as U.S. imports cannot fall much further, Asian economies soften and new ships ultimately come on the market.
The U.S. corn ethanol subsidy ended January 1. The annual federal subsidy, amounting to some US$6 billion annually, was implemented to promote the use of ethanol as an additive in motor vehicle fuel and thereby reduce dependency on foreign oil. The tax credit of 46 cents per ethanol gallon reached a high last year. With record deficits, however, the U.S. Congress could not afford to continue the program. Undaunted, the ethanol industry has just asked Congress to extend a five-year tax credit for cellulosic ethanol, currently at US$1.01 per gallon. This is good news for the syngas industry, which is commercializing technologies to convert the cellulose into syngas to create premium fuels and products...Full Article
"If you start from the trough of the financial crisis, what you find is a [price] spike that affects nearly all commodities," Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, told McKinsey Quarterly this month. "The only [commodities] that have gone down in price since early 2009 are natural gas, chicken, prawns, wood, and olive oil. I used to joke that this was great news if you were planning a surf-and-turf barbecue." Crude oil prices have more than doubled since the recent financial crisis. See Figure 1...Full Article
This year is likely to be remembered as when unconventional gas production was taken global. Although the pace is measured, early signs are promising. In April, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report assessing the potential for shale gas development in 48 basins in 32 countries. It estimated world shale reservoirs could contain as much as seven quadrillion cubic feet. These types of estimates are fueling optimism across several national markets. Shell’s Chief Executive Peter Voser, for example, said that he has "great expectations" for Chinese shale. In this issue, we learn of the success of horizontal wells drilled by his company in the Fushun-Yongchuan block in...Full Article
