BENTEK Top Stories

08/11/2017–
Canadian Observer

AECO up as USJR maintenance appears to start early

AECO cash basis rallied in trading Thursday, likely a result of maintenance at the Upstream of James River Area as total NGTL receipts fell over 0.5 Bcf/d in the last two days. TransCanada’s NGTL system was originally scheduled to begin capacity cuts at USJR around Gas Day 12, reducing capacity by 1.7–1.8 Bcf/d. However, the recent declines in receipts coupled with an increase in issuance of notices related to outages at USJR that were effective for GD 9 – although were not sent out until Thursday morning – makes USJR the likely culprit for production sliding, allowing AECO basis to strengthen even as downstream maintenance at Empress/McNeill border and Albert/BC border are underway. AECO basis managed to gain US $1.29/MMBtu for GD 11, bringing it up to minus $1.18. USJR restrictions were originally estimated to last 10 days, but with the early start it’s become more uncertain on how long receipts will be suppressed for. The downstream maintenance at the Alberta/BC border began on Thursday, causing deliveries from TC Foothills to the GTN System at Kingsgate to fall by almost 0.3 Bcf/d after averaging near 2.3 Bcf/d over the previous 30 days.