A new version of GPCM is now available for download on our website.  The 9.19.4 release contains several enhancements and bug fixes:

New Features and Enhancements in GPCM:

• A minor enhancement was made to the LNG Export report - we improved the description field for graphs in the LNG Exports Report.
• An enhancement was made to the Supply Factors form: we added the ability to change the unit of measure for NGL from bbl per MMcf to Gallons per Mcf.

Bug fixes in GPCM:

• A critical defect was fixed in the Make New Demand form: we fixed a bug that was introduced in 9.19.3 that prevents the Demand Case Make New feature from working.
• The Default Supply Factor table has been updated with the latest from 11Q4.
• A important defect was fixed in the Case Definition form: We fixed the Rename Subcases feature - Double Click the Scenario name and choose "No" to use this feature.

For more information or assistance, please call RBAC Technical Support at 818-501-7300.

 

A new version of GPCM is now available for download on our website.  The 9.19.3 release contains several enhancements and bug fixes:
 
New Features and Enhancements in GPCM:

• An important enhancement was added to the Supply Case Builder: Created a comprehensive Import feature.  Can now import Supply Outlooks from other databases.
• Several enhancements were added to the Reports: Added the PADD aggregation to the Supplier Deliveries Summary, added LNG exports to the Scenario Overview Exporter, and created a new LNG Exports Summary in the LNG reports
• A major enhancement was added to the Error Handling: Added a check for missing subcases in a Scenario

Bug fixes in GPCM:

• A critical defect was fixed in the Supply Case Builder: Infrastructure merge failed with more recent databases
• A critical defect was fixed in the Demand Case Builder: Load fails if there is no "base" demand forecast
• An important defect was fixed in the Supply Case Builder: Pasting a column of 0 values into the Q fields triggers unhelpful messages
• An important defect was fixed in the Batch: Batch fails if you cancel one of the scenarios by closing the status window
• A major defect was fixed in the DB Compare: Comparison crashes if you try to compare WTI Table only
• A major defect was fixed in the Infrastructure Builders: Market point builder leaves map left/top, and lat/long fields blank, causing GDS to crash when run
• A major defect was fixed in the Reports: Scenario Overview Exporter - LNG Import report wrong when terminal also used for exports

For more information or assistance, please call RBAC Technical Support at 818-501-7300.
 
Aaron Brooks, GPCM Product Manager
Robert Brooks, Founder and President, RBAC
 
© RBAC, Inc., 2012, All Rights Reserved.  GPCM is a registered trademark owned by RT7K, LLC, and is used with its permission.

 

GPCM® Base Case Licensee:

A new version of the GPCM database is now available for download from our website.  Please find attached an Executive Summary.  The Full Documentation Package along with supporting Excel Spreadsheets will be available on the RBAC website by Friday, January 27.

Below are some new features from the 11Q4base release:

• The near-term Henry Hub price level is lower than the previous quarter's basecase results, driven in the most part by increased lower-48 production, especially shale, and stagnant demand.  Henry Hub will begin a more Contango pattern from 11Q3base as producers pull back in their drilling programs due to low prices, particularly in dry plays.  However, a concerted gain is not seen for several years as reserve overhang is absorbed.   The short to mid-term Henry Hub price (2012 - 2015) is $3.39 in 2011 real dollars.  Prices gain in the mid to longer-term (2016 - 2020) at around $3.78.
• Pennsylvania production has been split out into two regional pieces, East and West.  Marcellus Shale and Conventional production are found in both sub-state regions and CBM is allocated to the West portion.  This is especially important as the amount of liquids varies depending on the area and pipeline supply links also vary by region.
• Demand Curves for LA Sabine Pass LNG Exports have been updated taking into account contracts that have been announced.
• TransCanada rates for 2012 have been set to continue the approved 2011 rates (formerly Interim 2011 rates).  Rates beginning in 2013 have been set to the current proposed rates that TCPL has submitted to the NEB.  Historical rates have been re-allocated to reflect more detailed information in recent filings.
• Transcontinental's Atlantic Access project has been built into the 11Q4base release.

© RBAC, Inc., 2012, All Rights Reserved. GPCM is a registered trademark owned by RT7K, LLC, and is used with its permission.

 

Version 9.19.1 of GPCM is now available for download on our website.

• One of the new features is the complete mapping of the Market Points in the GDS Market Point report. You can now turn on or off any of the various points. In addition, we have added the ability for you to save and restore your own default set of points in addition to RBAC’s default set. This should be useful to you if you want to quickly switch to a set of points that you use often.
• The main purpose of this release is to handle problems with the Supply Case Builder's import and load routines. The builder was failing if the Supply was zero, and also failed to merge differences in the Supply Areas between the import case and the linked database. The most important fix was improving the accuracy of the imported Outlook. We found that the outlook was being improperly normalized when seasonality wasn’t flat so the quantities were wrong. This is now corrected and the import is much more accurate.
• This release also improves various error checking routines so that they correctly find any problems and alert the user before the case is loaded or the scenario is run.

Additional fixes and features are listed in the Release Notes, or for more information or assistance, please call RBAC Technical Support at 818-501-7300.

 

• The overall Henry Hub price level is lower, driven in the most part by significantly lower WTI and increased lower-48 production, especially shale. The short to mid-term Henry Hub price (2012 - 2014) is $3.73 in 2010 real dollars. Prices fall a bit more to around $3.60 in the mid to longer-term (2015 - 2020) before rising to $4.65 in 2035.
• Although oil prices grew substantially after the 1990s, that growth has topped out since 2008. NYMEX futures in mid-October expect little or no growth in WTI prices through the end of the decade. This implies that WTI prices in constant dollars would fall. Prospects for a sustained recovery in real oil prices are eroding because of growing development of unconventional oil resources (e.g., shale and oil sands) and horizontal drilling. The production outlook indicates that North American demand on world crude supply will erode, especially after 2015. As technologies spread from North America, it is likely that world crude supply should remain loose relative to world oil demand outside of singular events for some time. We have aggregated these views into our current Supply and Demand Forecast Builder with WTI at $90.00 (in 2010 real dollars) for the remainder of 2011, $83.00 for 2012, $82.00 for 2013, $81.00 for 2014 and $80.00 starting in 2015 going forward. We have also changed the OGPR (Oil Gas Price Ratio) to 21 for 2011 and 19 from 2012 forward to reflect more recent trends in oil and gas prices.
• Strong shale production is dampening winter peaking in some cases and the reverse flows from Marcellus into Canada are displacing Canadian imports into the US. US exports into Mexico are increasing as Eagle Ford shale production grows. Production in the Permian basin is being re-directed from the Dallas and Houston markets to market areas in the west and Mexico.
• Texas Railroad District 1 has been split out into two supply areas, Permian and Gulf Coast, to more accurately reflect distribution to the proper basin group and delivery to the correct pipelines.
• Demand Curves for LA Sabine Pass LNG Exports have been updated.
• TransCanada rates have been left at the interim NEB-filed rates from earlier this year. New filings are occurring in September and October 2011 and the outcome will be reflected in the 11Q4base release.
• Added new zones to Leidy path of Transcontinental pipeline to more clearly display the line's total capacity. Along with updating the rates and fuels on many pipelines, the Long-Haul adjustments for Transco were affected. Added supply links to reflect the Marcellus Shale supply that is being picked up by the Leidy Line zones.

 

• We have added new Market Point coordinates to GDS – all of the Market Points are now available and you can turn any of them on or off as you like. You can also now save your own default selections in addition to RBAC’s default selection.
• We’ve sped up Make New Supply and Make New Demand features of the Supply and Demand forms. Some technical changes to the tables and queries behind the scenes have improved the speed of these two functions – this will enable you to make large changes with hundreds or thousands of adders or multipliers relatively quickly.

Bug fixes:

• We’ve fixed a defect in the Database Compare program that caused a crash if you tried to compare all infrastructure or just Target Supply.
• We’ve fixed a defect in the Customer Shares form that prevented the user from pasting shares in Datasheet view.
• We’ve fixed a defect in the Supplier Delivery Detail graph that caused the units to show up as MMCF when you wanted MMCF/day.
• We’ve fixed a defect in the Supply Case Builder that was causing the Update Prices function to incorrectly updates all of your (in development) supply cases.

Recap:

 

In case you missed it in the earlier release announcement, the most important new feature from the last release is a pair of reports that forecast cross border flows. These two reports are aggregated by pipeline or by state, and will help you determine how gas will likely flow across state borders for each pipeline and in aggregate. The report is currently limited to net flow calculations – meaning it will not show the ins and outs simultaneously between two states on a given pipeline. Also, you may find that you need to handle disconnects in your own database. First you need to run the report; you can turn it on in the new GPCM Launch form (so that it runs with your Scenario execution), or recompute it directly (on Scenarios already finished), and then review the exceptions. Exceptions indicate that a problem exists in the Pipe-state link data. This can be one of two main types of problem: the link is missing from the data, or the infrastructure link (intx, storage, supply or demand) actually has the wrong state. You can find the list of pipe-state link data in the Data Inputs under Pipeline Model.

 

Additional fixes and features are listed in the Release Notes, or for more information or assistance, please call RBAC Technical Support at 818-501-7300.

 

 

A new version of GPCM is now available for download on our website.  The 9.17.1 release contains several important new features, enhancements and bug fixes in GPCM and GDS.

 

Critical Bug fix: 

Enhancements in GPCM & GDS: 

For more information or for assistance, please call RBAC technical support at 818-501-7300.

 

• The Henry Hub price curve for 11Q1base2 is lower than the previous quarter’s base case results. The lower Henry Hub price is a result of a higher shale production forecast which in turn is due to more shale production data becoming available, especially in Pennsylvania. Note: An incorrect implementation of our economic forecast which reduced our demand forecast was found in the original 11Q1base database released last week. This has been corrected in the 11Q1base2 database, resulting in more reasonable demand and price levels about 5% higher than 11Q1base.
• LDC demand has been broken out by RES (Residential) and COM (Commercial). Each LDC customer is now able to deliver to both RES and COM customers. In the future they will be able to deliver gas to all actual end use sectors as inferred from EIA Form 176 for US companies and similar sources for Canada and Mexico.
• Seasonality was removed from the BC Kitimat LNG Export Demand to better reflect dispatching from a liquefaction facility. Planned expansions on Southern Crossing in BC and TCPL GTN in Oregon partially mitigate the reduced availability of gas from BC due to these exports, but not fully. Winter price spiking in BC, WA, and OR is expected in out years without further expansions to provide more supply from AB and the Rockies.
• Modeled LNG exports from the Gulf Coast. Created Demand Curves for LA Sabine Pass LNG Export Demand along with new Demand Links off of the LNG Sabine Pass Header pipeline. Similar modeling can be done for other potential LNG export terminals in the Gulf in subsequent quarters, dependent on actual real world contracts and permitting.
• A 6-month short-term weather forecast based on NOAA forecasts has been incorporated into the demand curves for the first six months of the forecast period. The weather assumptions used to build the demand curves in GPCM are based on 30-year average weather. Previously, that 30-year period was from 1971 through 2000. Beginning with 11Q1base it is 1981 through 2010.
  

 

New Features in GDS:

Enhancements in GPCM:

• GPCM has a new Demand model paradigm – Pipeline customers (LDCs) may now deliver to multiple Sectors. You can convert your reference case to the new format, including separating your LDC demand into RES and COM demand, using the Convert function on the Customer Form. Note: convert only works on databases whose scenario(s) haven’t yet been run.
• The solver now features improved data precision and runtime speed – we’ve cut about 700-1000 seconds off of the run, about 10-15% depending on the speed of your machine.

Bug fixes:

• The Storage Plan builder has been corrected for Canadian storage plans.
• The Supply form has been improved as well – it no longer takes a very long time to paste in large numbers of supply records.

There are several more important bug fixes in GPCM and GDS that you can read about in the release notes.

 

For more information or for assistance, please call RBAC technical support at 818-501-7300. 

 

RBAC is holding our upcoming GPCM User Conference in Houston, TX on June 1-3, 2011.  The first day of the conference will consist of high level discussion regarding the future of the natural gas industry.  The second two days of the conference will involve lectures and workshops for both intermediate and advanced GPCM users.  For more information, please contact James Brooks at (818) 784-5400.

 

A new version of GPCM is now available for download from our website.  The 9.16.0 release contains several important enhancements to GPCM.

New Features and Enhancements in GPCM & GDS:

• The Storage Plan Builder has been enhanced to build up new storage fields and capacity increases in existing fields over a six month period rather than immediately.
• We've added a Natural Gas Liquids Production forecast and reporting tools.
• The user interface now features an improved GPCM Menu system which is available at any time from any Form during your GPCM session. It also has improvements in the organizational structure of Data Inputs and Reports and a new Geography sub-menu of Data Inputs for managing Countries, States, Aggregations, and Locations.
• We've also made a major enhancement to the Calibration of Storage Plans that uses historical capacity utilization to produce better calibrations.
• This release includes a major enhancement to the Supply Summary - it now has additional aggregation/filtering capability just like the Supplier Deliveries Summary Report.
• You can now use compounding multipliers in the Supply Make New form.  For example, you can model an increase of 10% in 2020 and an additional 10% in 2025 by specifying a record with multiplier of 1.1 from Jan-2020 through Dec-2035 and another record with multiplier of 1.1 from Jan-2025 through Dec-2035.

In addition:

• We fixed a bug in the Supply Case Builder that was applying Seasonality more than once if there was more than one supply type or play in that supply area.

We have added a number of other minor enhancements and also fixed a several small bugs in this release. See the release notes for details.