UPCOMING SCHEDULE DETAILS:

COURSE SUMMARY

Fundamentals of Gas Storage is a VIRTUAL classroom course presented by the energy training experts at Mennta Energy Solutions.

This course provides an overview natural gas storage, but also draws comparisons to LPG and petroleum liquids storage.  After reviewing the physical properties of gas, delegates will learn about the different types of storage, storage requirements, the markets for the various gases, regional supply and demand balances and global trends.  We will also review gas storage trading strategies.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Class delegates include people who are new to natural gas and LPG markets, or to commercial storage operating companies.  The course also appeals to non-technical staff who wish to learn more about gas storage, including support staff, analysts and management in the areas of supply, operations, trading, marketing, risk management, finance, contracts and IT.

COURSE CONTENTS

Introduction to Physical Aspects of Gas Storage

Overview of Petroleum Gases

• Methane, ethane, propane and butanes
• Paraffinic and olefinic gases
• Key physical properties of gases
• Natural gas, natural gas liquids and LPG

Physics of Gases and Units of Measure

• Units of pressure
• Units of volume
• Temperature scales
• Impact of temperature and pressure on gases and liquids

Overview of Gas Storage Methods

• Pressurized and refrigerated storage
• Underground and above-ground gas storage types
• Depleted field storage design and operation
• Salt cavern storage construction and operation
• Rock cavern storage construction and operation
• Pressurized sphere and bullet tank storage for LPG
• Refrigerated storage and LNG tanks
• LNG storage terminal facilities
• Floating storage of LNG

Interactive elements:

• Properties of gases:  In this short breakout exercise, delegates must correctly match a list of gases with a list of selected physical and chemical properties of petroleum gases.
• Gas storage methods: In this short breakout exercise, delegates fill out a summary table listing the key characteristics of different types of storage. 

Introduction to Commercial Aspects of Gas Storage

Operation of Commercial Gas Storage

• Access to natural gas storage in Europe
• Access to natural gas storage in North America
• Commercial access to LNG storage
• Commercial access to LPG storage
• Primary and secondary markets

Storage Economics

• Marketing of commercial storage
• Sources of value in gas storage
• Factors affecting storage prices
• Intrinsic and extrinsic value of storage
• Gas forward curves
• Seasonal price differentials
• Gas price volatility
• Storage as a “real option”

Trading strategies for storage

• Ruthless and non-ruthless exercise
• Storage plays and intrinsic value capture
• Theoretical approaches to value maximization

Interactive elements:

• Gas storage trading exercise:  In this breakout exercise, delegates work as a team to try to make a trading profit by trading fixed price forward contracts for gas and moving gas in and out of storage.  If the class is large enough, delegates would be divided into teams who compete to see who can make the most profit.

FACULTY

Nigel Harris is a director and principal consultant at Kingston Energy Consulting, which he founded with Mary Jackson in 2002. He has been helping energy traders to analyse and understand the markets for over 25 years, initially as a developer of market analysis software systems, and more recently as a consultant. At Kingston Energy Consulting, his main focus is on providing education and information transfer to participants in the energy trading business, through instructor-led classroom training, web-based training development, research projects, workshops, briefings and research-based report writing. In his work with Mennta Energy Solutions, he has created a library of new instructor-led and web-based courses on European gas and power markets and trading. In 2005, he worked with Mary Jackson to develop the popular Oil Trading Orientation course, which has since been presented at venues all over the world. He has also extensively revised and updated many existing courses on derivatives, hedging and risk management.  He regularly presents this material both at public venues and as in-house, often customised, courses. He is co-author of a series of highly regarded reports on European natural gas trading and has also contributed to reports on power markets and oil trading. In previous roles, he was a key member of the team that initially designed and developed Saladin’s innovative Petroleum Analysis Workstation, a system that became an industry standard for historical price analysis during the 1990s and remained in use in the industry for two decades. During this period, he worked closely and extensively with oil and gas traders around the world to understand their information and analytical requirements. He also spent some years as an independent consultant, working mainly with software and information providers to help them better understand the oil and gas trading sectors.