We are seeing a flood of CCUS announcements in the US in 2022, but they look like “gathering” exercises at this stage rather than projects that are ready for FID. Companies are chasing potential pore space and, like Talos, leasing onshore and offshore (mainly offshore) acreage, where they believe opportunities exist to sequester CO2. These announcements sometimes include firm commitments from companies that have CO2 surpluses and sometimes are more speculative. At this stage, it seems like a “land grab” and “customer grab”. There is wide agreement that the incentive structure in the US – centered around the 45Q tax credit scheme – is not enough to drive much real investment, unless it can be stacked with other credits like the LCFS structure, which only applies to fuels in California today. We see the land grab as relatively low-cost and low-risk positioning in the hope that incentives or economics change. There are some instances where investments will go ahead, and these will focus on processes that have a reasonably low cost of carbon capture – fermentation, urea, natural gas clean-up for LNG, and a handful of other processes. The LSB Industries announcement for Arkansas, highlighted this week, is likely an example of where the economics work even if LSB cannot get much of a premium for the low-carbon urea.
Tesla is on a roll, and showing other EV makers what is possible. The company priced its vehicles to be profitable at lower volumes and is currently seeing the benefit of scale, likely to be enhanced further as the manufacturing footprint grows. While the operating margin below looks very good, we would note that Tesla is not done scaling yet so there is considerable upside to the margin, most likely. One obvious conclusion from this analysis is that Tesla has plenty of wiggle room on pricing should macro conditions impact new car sales or should other EV makers try to steal share with pricing. Tesla has built a huge first-mover advantage in EVs and this will likely benefit the company for many years to come as long as they keep making vehicles that people want.
Shell issued its 2021 energy transition progress this morning and the report contains a lot of detail about what Shell has done so far and what the company intends to do. The report is a record of progress and intent and is targeting both general stakeholders as well as the Shell board and annual meeting, where approval of the plan will be sought. When compared with other reports we have seen from other companies, this summary is comprehensive. It provides some concrete steps to achieving emission goals in 2030 – exhibit below - while remaining appropriately vague about getting to 2040 and 2050 targets. However, we would note how much portfolio changes likely added to the 2016 to 2021 progress – likely proportionately much more than they are expected to contribute from 2022 to 2030. Both renewable power and CCS figure in the 2030 projections below and Shell will need to get moving on the CCS front of it is to sequester 3-6 million tons of CO2 per annum by 2030. The expectations are likely based on the European offshore projects, as it may take longer than 8 years to get permits and investments in place in the US. The US could move faster but the EPA would likely need to grant primacy to at least Louisiana and Texas for things to speed up and we are not convinced that this will happen soon. Like many of the other company 2030 plans that we have seen, it is likely that much of Shell’s progress will come in the last couple of years of the decade – especially on CCS.
While longer-term use of oil and gas products is in Enterprise Products' best interest, it is nice to see someone else pushing the point that we have been making for more than a year – that there is not enough material out there, in the right locations, to meet the suggested clean energy goals. It is important that this becomes better understood and accepted by a broader group than just Enterprise and C-MACC, as we will not get the needed tack in strategy, priorities, and incentives if there is a broad reliance on renewable targets that will not be met – we focus on the IPCC report in tomorrow’s ESG and Climate report.
One of the concerns that the IPCC has in its report issued this week is that things are not happening fast enough and the Ammonia analysis in the chart below would support this view. Most of the capacity addition comes post-2030 in large part because project planners cannot see a way to enough cheap power to generate the green hydrogen needed until that time. In our view, since COP26 the transition part of the energy transition has been overwhelmed by advocates of green technology and renewable pathways without much thought about how practical they might be today. Those suggesting transition options are being given very little airtime and as a consequence, we see broad hostility towards anything that is not truly green, regardless of whether the costs or time frames make any real sense. If we do not embrace bold transitionary steps including the use of hydrocarbons with aggressive abatement targets we will not meet any of the shorter-term goals that the IPCC highlights and we are putting hope in renewable and technology development which may come up short. Related to this we see the LNG dilemma in Europe, with the current and medium-term needs very apparent, but a reluctance to sign up for longer-term supply because of an expectation that if all things renewable come to pass, the LNG might not be needed. The Europeans will need to make the longer-term commitment if they are to persuade the US and other potential exporters to build new export terminals.
Looking at the Sempra chart below, we reflect on some research that we wrote several months ago that talked about a lost opportunity in the US because of the lack of cooperation and coordination in Washington. Energy demand is growing, the demand for materials is growing and the demand for re-shoring is growing, and if the US political and permitting system is either too hostile towards new investment or too cumbersome companies will look for workarounds. The Dow investment in Canada was partly justified by the easier regulatory environment as well as the proposed carbon price. Sempra is looking at Mexico because the ease of permitting for LNG is advantageous and we note Mattel's “near-shoring” in Mexico rather than reshoring. The opportunities for both Mexico and Canada are very significant if we remain mostly directionless in the US. For more see today's daily report.
The coal data in the Exhibit below is likely not popular with the environmental lobby. However, the EIA analysis takes into account the alternatives for the countries involved and the fortunes of coal in these countries will be directly impacted by the help that other countries offer. If the region can be assured of abundant sources of alternative energy, whether renewables or more likely LNG, then the use of coal will fall. This is another example of where some of the global energy policies are coming up short in our view. The better solution is to champion (clean) LNG growth, wherever possible, to bridge the huge gap between the energy the world needs and the rate at which it can be supplied from renewables. See more in today's daily report.
There are a handful of “renewable” headlines in today's daily report, and it is probably worthwhile discussing the differences. First; the linked Gevo RNG announcement is likely one of several RNG projects that we will see come online in 2022, as there are a number of farm-based RNG projects underway in the US and other parts of the world. The Gevo facility is based on farm manure and is expected to produce 355,000 MMBtu of RNG per year. As such it is not large, and all of the farm-based projects are small in the larger context of the natural gas markets. However, when focused on decarbonizing a specific product or process this RNG can be very important. Our take on the market is that there will likely be more demand for RNG than supply, as several companies are looking for RNG to make proposed investments make sense from a “green” perspective (Monolith would be a good example). This suggests that it will be better to be a seller than a buyer longer-term.
One piece of big news early this week was ExxonMobil’s announcement that it is developing plans that will drive net-zero emissions by 2050 and the company shared a detailed overview. We have picked some charts from the report, some of which can help us draw conclusions for ExxonMobil, but others are more general. The company is banking on a lot of emission reduction and CCS to get to the 2030 target and a large part of the goal is likely to come from the plans for the Permian and the previously stated net-zero target that the company has for 2030 – detail on how this will be achieved is shown in the Exhibit below, see more in today's ESG report.
The first chart below has been included in a similar form in prior work and is a good summary of what is needed to decarbonize the LNG market to the greatest degree possible. There is a lot of resistance to the idea of endorsing natural gas as a transition fuel, but so many developed and developing countries need natural gas – often in the form of LNG – to displace or avoid (additional) coal use. If the LNG industry does not start to pursue the paths suggested in the exhibit, and reasonably quickly, it will stand very little chance of winning, or perhaps surviving, a PR battle that is very much stacked against it.