IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v63y2017icp13-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The economic viability of gas-to-liquids technology and the crude oil–natural gas price relationship

Author

Listed:
  • Ramberg, David J.
  • Henry Chen, Y.H.
  • Paltsev, Sergey
  • Parsons, John E.

Abstract

This paper explores the viability of a gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology and examines how GTL penetration could shape the evolution of the crude oil–natural gas price ratio. Much research has established the cointegrated relationship between crude oil and natural gas prices in the U.S. The persistently low U.S. natural gas prices in recent years seem to mark a shift in this relationship, and have led some in industry to begin considering investments in GTL capacity in the US. In order to look forward over decades when the underlying economic drivers may be outside of historical experience, we use a computable general equilibrium model of the global economy to evaluate the economic viability of GTL and its impact on the evolution of the crude oil–natural gas price ratio. Our results are negative for the potential role of GTL. In order to produce any meaningful penetration of GTL, we find it necessary to evaluate scenarios that seem extreme. With any carbon cap GTL is not viable. Moreover, even without a carbon cap of any kind, extremely optimistic assumptions about (i) the cost and efficiency of GTL technology and about (ii) the available resource base of natural gas and the cost of extraction, before the technology penetrates and it impacts the evolution of the crude oil–natural gas price ratio.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramberg, David J. & Henry Chen, Y.H. & Paltsev, Sergey & Parsons, John E., 2017. "The economic viability of gas-to-liquids technology and the crude oil–natural gas price relationship," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 13-21.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:63:y:2017:i:c:p:13-21
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2017.01.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988317300270
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2017.01.017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen P. A. Brown & Mine K. Yucel, 2008. "What Drives Natural Gas Prices?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 45-60.
    2. Peter R. Hartley & Kenneth B Medlock III & Jennifer E. Rosthal, 2008. "The Relationship of Natural Gas to Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 47-66.
    3. Apostolos Serletis & Ricardo Rangel-Ruiz, 2007. "Testing for Common Features in North American Energy Markets," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Quantitative And Empirical Analysis Of Energy Markets, chapter 14, pages 172-187, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. repec:clg:wpaper:1999-04 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. David J. Ramberg and John E. Parsons, 2012. "The Weak Tie Between Natural Gas and Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    6. Apostolos Serletis & John Herbert, 2007. "The Message in North American Energy Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Quantitative And Empirical Analysis Of Energy Markets, chapter 13, pages 156-171, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Brigida, Matthew, 2014. "The switching relationship between natural gas and crude oil prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 48-55.
    8. Chan, Gabriel & Reilly, John M. & Paltsev, Sergey & Chen, Y.-H. Henry, 2012. "The Canadian oil sands industry under carbon constraints," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 540-550.
    9. Lance J. Bachmeier & James M. Griffin, 2006. "Testing for Market Integration: Crude Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 55-72.
    10. Frank Asche & Petter Osmundsen & Maria Sandsmark, 2006. "The UK Market for Natural Gas, Oil and Electricity: Are the Prices Decoupled?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 27-40.
    11. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-65 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Sergey Paltsev, 2012. "Implications of Alternative Mitigation Policies on World Prices for Fossil Fuels and Agricultural Products," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-065, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Paltsev, Sergey, 2012. "Implications of Alternative Mitigation Policies on World Prices for Fossil Fuels and Agricultural Products," WIDER Working Paper Series 065, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rodrigues, A.C.C., 2022. "Decreasing natural gas flaring in Brazilian oil and gas industry," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Zhang, Dayong & Wang, Tiantian & Shi, Xunpeng & Liu, Jia, 2018. "Is hub-based pricing a better choice than oil indexation for natural gas? Evidence from a multiple bubble test," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 495-503.
    3. Saad A. Al-Sobhi & Ali Elkamel & Fatih S. Erenay & Munawar A. Shaik, 2018. "Simulation-Optimization Framework for Synthesis and Design of Natural Gas Downstream Utilization Networks," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Pauletto, Gianluca & Galli, Federico & Gaillardet, Alice & Mocellin, Paolo & Patience, Gregory S., 2021. "Techno economic analysis of a micro Gas-to-Liquid unit for associated natural gas conversion," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abdullahi Alim & Peter R. Hartley & Yihui Lan, 2018. "Asian Spot Prices for LNG and other Energy Commodities," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    2. Kaufmann, Robert K. & Hines, Edward, 2018. "The effects of combined-cycle generation and hydraulic fracturing on the price for coal, oil, and natural gas: Implications for carbon taxes," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 603-611.
    3. Derek Bunn, Julien Chevallier, Yannick Le Pen, and Benoit Sevi, 2017. "Fundamental and Financial Influences on the Co-movement of Oil and Gas Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    4. Gatfaoui, Hayette, 2016. "Linking the gas and oil markets with the stock market: Investigating the U.S. relationship," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 5-16.
    5. Zied Ftiti & Kais Tissaoui & Sahbi Boubaker, 2022. "On the relationship between oil and gas markets: a new forecasting framework based on a machine learning approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 313(2), pages 915-943, June.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11692 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Jadidzadeh, Ali & Serletis, Apostolos, 2017. "How does the U.S. natural gas market react to demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 66-74.
    8. Li, Fengyun & Li, Xingmei & Zheng, Haofeng & Yang, Fei & Dang, Ruinan, 2021. "How alternative energy competition shocks natural gas development in China: A novel time series analysis approach," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    9. Ji, Qiang & Zhang, Hai-Ying & Geng, Jiang-Bo, 2018. "What drives natural gas prices in the United States? – A directed acyclic graph approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 79-88.
    10. Ali Jadidzadeh & Mobin Mirzababaei & Apostolos Serletis, 2022. "Oil Prices and the Hydrocarbon Markets: A Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-9, August.
    11. Lahiani, Amine & Miloudi, Anthony & Benkraiem, Ramzi & Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2017. "Another look on the relationships between oil prices and energy prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 318-331.
    12. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-414 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Zhang, Dayong & Shi, Min & Shi, Xunpeng, 2018. "Oil indexation, market fundamentals, and natural gas prices: An investigation of the Asian premium in natural gas trade," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 33-41.
    14. Batten, Jonathan A. & Ciner, Cetin & Lucey, Brian M., 2017. "The dynamic linkages between crude oil and natural gas markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 155-170.
    15. Frank Asche, Atle Oglend, and Petter Osmundsen, 2017. "Modeling UK Natural Gas Prices when Gas Prices Periodically Decouple from the Oil Price," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    16. Hasanli, Mübariz, 2024. "Re-examining crude oil and natural gas price relationship: Evidence from time-varying regime-switching models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    17. Gatfaoui, Hayette, 2015. "Pricing the (European) option to switch between two energy sources: An application to crude oil and natural gas," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 270-283.
    18. Scarcioffolo, Alexandre R. & Etienne, Xiaoli, 2021. "Testing directional predictability between energy prices: A quantile-based analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Narjes Zamani, 2016. "How the Crude Oil Market Affects the Natural Gas Market? Demand and Supply Shocks," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 6(2), pages 217-221.
    20. Atle Oglend & Morten E. Lindback & Petter Osmundsen, 2016. "Shale Gas Boom Affecting the Relationship Between LPG and Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, , vol. 37(1), pages 211-232, January.
    21. Ohana, Steve, 2010. "Modeling global and local dependence in a pair of commodity forward curves with an application to the US natural gas and heating oil markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 373-388, March.
    22. Jorge Chebeir & Aryan Geraili & Jose Romagnoli, 2017. "Development of Shale Gas Supply Chain Network under Market Uncertainties," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-31, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gas-to-liquids technology; Natural gas price; Oil price; General equilibrium model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q47 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy Forecasting
    • C68 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computable General Equilibrium Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:63:y:2017:i:c:p:13-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.