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Following a two-year hiatus, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has resumed issuing license renewals for nuclear power plants. On October 20, the NRC renewed the operating licenses for Limerick Generating Station Units 1 and 2, located northwest of Philadelphia, extending their license expiration dates by 20 years, to 2044 and 2049, respectively. With this action, the NRC has granted license renewals providing a 20-year extension to a total of 74 of the 100 operating reactors in the United States. Nuclear power accounted for 20% of total power sector electricity generation in 2013. NRC has the authority to issue initial...

Hit by uncertainly over oil supplies from West Asia, India is keen to diversify its imports and wants to buy crude from the US, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said. The new strategy is being planned to guard against disruption in supplies from its biggest sources in the Middle East - Iraq and Syria - as they are caught in problems relating to Islamic State movement. Asia's second-biggest energy user, which spends $143 billion on import of crude oil in 2013-14, wants the US to extend its policy of allowing gas exports to crude oil as well. "I met officials...

European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger and Ukraine Energy Minister Yuri Prodan will speak by phone on Monday to prepare for trilateral talks with Russia on resolving a gas pricing row, a Commission official said. Citing unpaid bills, Russia cut off gas flows to Kiev in mid-June, adding to East-West tensions triggered by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and conflict in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. Last Tuesday, the latest round of talks between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the Commission, to try to resolve the gas supply dispute ended without a deal. Since then, relations between Russia and Ukraine may have been...

The quickest way to ruin a barbecue chicken is to let the fire get too hot. The same is true in business, and until a few weeks ago, nothing had been hotter than oil this year. High crude oil prices have certainly fueled innovation and economic growth over the last four years, and the dozen or so major construction projects in downtown Houston are driven by the oil boom. But allow me for a moment to sing the praises of the 25 percent pullback that has dropped prices to two-year lows. No analyst can confidently predict where oil prices will...

Opec is likely to let the price of oil slide further as it gambles that US shale oil producers will be forced to slow production first. The oil cartel, which includes a number of Persian Gulf states, as well as Nigeria and Venezuela, has remained silent as oil prices have tumbled over recent months. Some analysts have predicted the oil producers club will decide to reduce production at its next meeting, scheduled for November, in a bid to maintain price levels at around $100 a barrel. Yet, with a barrel of crude oil currently at $82.37 (£50.90, €64.69), the member...

Norway's Fred. Olsen Energy said the global rig market would struggle with lower demand and oversupply as it reported third-quarter profits below expectations on Tuesday. Rates in the offshore rig market have fallen from a 2013 high as oil companies cut spending and as newly built rigs enter the market, creating overcapacity. "(There is) continued low contracting activity in all market segments," the firm said in presentation material. "An increase in number of idle rigs is seen, predominantly in international mid water and deepwater markets ... As a result, dayrates have decreased in all market segments." Rival Maersk Drilling, a...

The recent drop of $20 or so in oil prices from near all-time highs has pundits racing for their typewriters. Okay, laptops or something. Many have declared OPEC dead or ineffective, and one academic has noted that OPEC almost always produces over quota, proving it’s not a competent cartel. Needless to say, aged methane emissions like me tend to sign in our beards when we read this. OPEC has been declared dead more times than Mark Twain or the Boston Red Sox (next year for sure!) and yet it continues to hold meetings and set production quotas, as if thousands...

A month after implementing new rules regarding the flaring of natural gas, the state of North Dakota was near compliance with the new limits as oil and gas production companies in the Bakken work to reduce flaring, according to the United States Department of Energy (DOE). In August, 28 percent of North Dakota’s natural gas was flared, the state reported. That was near North Dakota’s flare-rate goal of 26 percent in 4Q 2014, despite an increase in oil production in the Bakken in August, according to the website Bakken.com. Following criticism from royalty holders regarding extensive flaring that made North...

The oil price and need for the energy industry to reduce costs dominated debate at the opening session of the Society of Petroleum Engineers' Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam Monday. The session, titled "Affordable Energy", included panelists from the International Energy Agency (IEA), ExxonMobil, PEMEX and Technip. The recent fall in the price of oil – with Brent Crude plunging below $85 per barrel – prompted questions among an audience of hundreds of SPE delegates as to the viability of many oil and gas projects around the world. Chris Besson, senior energy analyst at the IAE, believes it...

U.S. benchmark crude prices will fall to $70 per barrel next year, according to a new forecast published by Goldman Sachs Monday, suggesting that the recent and pronounced slide in oil prices isn’t a temporary phenomenon. The decline is due to oil production growing at a faster pace than demand, leading to global oil market that’s oversupplied. The report called the change inevitable, noting that “getting to a point where the market shifted back into surplus was only a matter of time.” The report predicts that West Texas Intermediate will fall to $70 per barrel in the second quarter of...

A senior Kuwaiti official said on Sunday the Khafji oilfield, run jointly with Saudi Arabia, had been shut down for "purely technical and not political" reasons, state news agency KUNA reported. Crude production from the Khafji oilfield had been halted temporarily to comply with environmental rules, according to an industry source and an internal letter seen by Reuters. But the closure of the offshore field, which has an output of between 280,000 to 300,000 barrels per day, revived speculation of renewed tensions between the two countries. Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry undersecretary Khaled al-Jarallah, speaking in Riyadh after a meeting of Gulf...

ExxonMobil is activating the powerful Nabors 27E drilling rig, for transportation by ice road in the coming winter to the company’s huge Point Thomson gas condensate field on the North Slope, company executives told Petroleum News Oct. 16. The rig will continue drilling operations that were started at the field several years ago. With up to 1,200 people and 70 Alaska companies involved in activities ranging from gravel laying to pipeline installation, field development has been moving steadily ahead, said Nathan Sanborn, project manager for the Point Thomson Initial Production System. The company has spent the last couple of years...

We have heard the story before: political turmoil in the Middle East, disruption of global oil supplies by members of OPEC. In the past, the unrest in Iran would be causing oil prices to spike up. Instead they have been falling by more than 25%. Gas prices at the pump have fallen to less than $3 a gallon in many markets. That's quite a change from the past 40 years, when OPEC and other foreign oil producers have wielded oil as a political and economic weapon to slow down and even cripple the U.S. economy. Saudi Arabia was by far...

State-owned, Mexican oil company Petróleos Mexicanos reported a stiff loss and declining production in the third quarter of 2014, as Mexico nears a historic transition to an open energy industry. Pemex said it lost 59.8 billion pesos or $4.4 billion during the July to September period, compared with a year earlier loss of 39.2 billion pesos or $2.9 billion. The loss was driven by falling oil prices and declining production, among other reasons, executives told investors on a Friday conference call. Pemex said it pumped an average of 2.4 million barrels per day in the most recent quarter, down about...

BNSF Railway Co. plans to apply a $1,000 surcharge for each older tank car that hauls oil, as the railroad owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. encourages shippers to scrap the puncture-prone cars. The charge, which will take effect Jan. 1, will add about $1.50 per barrel to the cost of shipping oil across the country. It’s the first surcharge announced by a major U.S. railroad for older cars known as DOT-111s, and won’t apply to cars called CPC-1232s that are built to higher standards adopted in October 2011, according to a BNSF notice. The Obama administration in July...

The economic benefits to the United States from the energy industry have more than doubled in just the past ten years, even after accounting for inflation, according to a new study by The Perryman Group. The growth in the industry is worth about $1.2 trillion in gross product each year, the study noted, adding that the growth in the oil and gas industry since the economic recession has been “dramatic.” In fact, since the start of the economic recovery, the energy industry has contributed about 30 percent of the total job growth for the nation, Dr. Ray Perryman, president and...

Sen. Ron Wyden wants the United States to rethink the size and scope of its emergency oil stockpile. Because a surge of domestic oil production has pared the United States’ reliance on foreign crude, the country may not need to stash as much away in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Wyden, D-Ore., said in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “The recent shale boom is having a profound effect on United States energy policy” and making even relatively recent rules “at best irrelevant,” Wyden said. “In the case of the SPR, estimates on size are no longer in line with...

Observers have long known that only a few options were available for the route of the privately funded high-speed train line between Houston and Dallas. Now a firmer picture of where the trains might run is emerging. (Photo courtesy of JR Central) (Photo courtesy of JR Central) As part of the federally required process to evaluate the line, the Federal Railroad Administration and Texas Department of Transportation released maps of the nine routes they are considering and the two chosen for deeper evaluation. The lines that didn’t make the final cut seem to be a bit longer, or else have...

A new HVDC line will let Europe store more wind energy in Norway’s hydropower system Norway’s hydropower reservoirs make up nearly half of Europe’s energy storage capacity. European grid operators need energy storage to cope with an ever-mounting, always-shifting torrent of wind power. See the connection? So does Norway. In December, engineers will energize a new subsea power cable that will begin to bridge the gap between need and opportunity, greatly expanding European power systems’ access to Norway’s hydropower-rich power grid. The 240-kilometer cable across the Skagerrak Strait separating southern Norway and northern Denmark is Norway’s first new power link...

As refineries and petrochemical plants struggle to find enough skilled workers to fill a surge of new jobs, Dow Chemical is considering an old solution to solve a new problem. The multinational chemical corporation plans to launch a pilot apprenticeship program next year at eight of its plants, including manufacturing sites in Freeport, Bayport, Deer Park, Seadrift and Texas City. The company expects to hire 60 apprentices, who will receive two to four years of training and on-the-job experience to prepare them for jobs as chemical process operators, instrumentation and equipment technicians and analyzer technicians. The apprenticeship positions will be...