I would not expect gas prices to fall significantly. There is no real competition in the NZ gas market, so no reason to lower prices. Crude oil is a different situation, however
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With Otahuhu and Southdown gas fired stations closing this year, that is a huge drop in demand for gas. However LPG does not see the same drop in demand, and the only way to get LPG is to continue extracting gas from the ground. Therefore buyers have to be found for that gas. Other than electricity generation, Methanex is the only other large user of gas, and they will only buy at quite low prices.
LPG can easily be imported, if it ever became a financial driver. Probably at similar costs, because LPG is often the "waste product" of gas extraction.
For example, when Maui was producing huge quantities of natural gas, XS LPG was being sold to aussie for 1-2 cents/litre
While some natural gas fired plants are closing, new ones are also opening (not necessarily solely for electricity generation). NI dairy industry preferentially uses gas where it is available for example. There is also talk of more gas peaking capacity being the back-up plan if GNE retire the remaining rankines in 2 years, and if GNE do not retire them, then they probably use natural gas once the coal stockpile is gone
The company I work for has not seen any meaningful gas price decrease, and our usage has increased 200% due to expansion in the last year. We use about 16,000GJ/month, so a reasonable quantity
I notice on the quarterly pricing data for gas from the excel spreadsheet available here: ...
http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-service...tistics/prices
...that wholesale gas prices have fallen from 2.08c/kWh (June 2015 quarter) to 1.78c/kWh (September 2015 quarter). This is a 14% fall in price, albeit in the energy cost component only. However, that price fall alone would not fully devalue a 33% increase in gas reserves.
All this is assuming all sales are on the spot market. We know this assumption to be false, because most sales are on longer term contracts, and may be even "take or pay". However, I assume that long term gas contracts would have some price readjustment points built into those supply contracts (?). And 2016 is conveniently close to five years (a nice round figure reset time?) since the field started producing in commercial quantities. All this gas contract stuff is educated speculation on my part. It would be nice if someone on the customer side could confirm!
So, most likely, I would deduce that Genesis have not got around to adjusting parts of their website for the increase in 2P gas resource.
SNOOPY
The decline in wholesale price from the mbie website is recorded as going from 2.35c/kWh to 1.78c/kWh over the last year. This is a decline of 'only' 24%. So your negotiating team has done well to get 30% Jantar!
SNOOPY
PS 50,000GJ /day divided by 24 is:
2,083 GJ/hour
= 2,083,000 MJ/hour
= 34,717 MJ/minute
= 578.6 MJ/second = 579MW !
That is one heck of a lot of power.
Not sure if it has already been discussed, but what does everyone think of the new CEO?