Free Republic

A new power plant in West Texas that could transform coal into cleaner-burning natural gas is poised to break ground later this year, an executive in charge of the project said at a conference in Houston Wednesday. The project, located on a 600-acre site in Odessa, uses coal as a feedstock for a 400 megawatt power plant. But instead of burning it, the plant uses a chemical process to first strip it of carbon, sulfur and mercury. The result, project leaders say, is a hydrocarbon that can fuel the power plan but burns even cleaner than natural gas — even...

TransCanada on Thursday announced a two-year delay to its plans to move the Canadian tar sands. The company is cancelling its plans to build a controversial export terminal in Quebec, citing environmental concern over the endangered beluga whale. This means a delay to plans for finishing the Energy East pipeline, now set for 2020. In the meantime, TransCanada will search for a new location for its port. For once, then, Canadian oil news isn't about the TransCanada-owned Keystone XL, which has faced a six-year delay as the Obama administration sits on a decision to issue a permit. At least not...

Wednesday morning, social network users reported a fire on the dwelling platform Abkatun Alfa located in Mexico's oil-rich Bay of Campeche. According to local media reports, the Abkatun Alpha is a dwelling platform purposed for housing personnel working offshore in the Bay of Campeche. Early reports also indicate it is owned by a private firm subcontracted by Pemex. Preliminary information indicates a failure in operation processes caused the fire. The incident prompted the evacuation of the platform. Some injuries were also reported. The injured were transported via helicopter from the rig to hospitals in Ciudad del Carmen. One death, 48...

1) What happened in Turkey on March 31? At 10:36 a.m., a massive blackout hit Turkey. Out of the 81 Turkish provinces, electricity was not totally cut only in the eastern province of Van, which receives some of its energy from Iran. In total, more than 76 million citizens were affected in one way or another. Described by the Energy Ministry as the worst national blackout since the 1999 Marmara earthquake, the outage wreaked havoc in daily life throughout the country with mass transit and traffic lights ceasing to work, hospitals sounding the alarm, factories halting production, mobile phone connections...

...destroyed three_buildings and killed two men in the East Village last week resulted from an attempt to hide the unauthorized siphoning of natural gas for tenants in one of the buildings. Their working theory is that one or more gas lines were surreptitiously tapped over several months; then the siphoning apparatus was dismantled or hidden on Thursday before Consolidated Edison conducted an inspection. As soon as the utility inspectors left, an attempt to resume the diversion of gas went awry, setting off the explosion, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of this working theory. That version of events...

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Monday it had begun producing from its Hadrian South Gulf of Mexico project. Total production of the project is expected to reach about 300 million cubic feet of gas and 3,000 barrels of liquids per day from two wells. The well is located about 230 miles offshore and in about 7,650 feet of water. First production comes after a discovery well was drilled in 2008 and an appraisal well was completed in 2009. Exxon operates the Hadrian South project with a 46.7 percent interest while Brazil’s Petrobras and Italy’s Eni hold a 23.3 percent and 30...

For the first time, EIA is providing monthly data on rail movements of crude oil, which have significantly increased over the past five years. The new data on crude-by-rail (CBR) movements are integrated with EIA's existing monthly petroleum supply statistics, which already include movements by pipeline, tanker, and barge. The new monthly time series of crude oil rail movements includes shipments to and from Canada and dramatically reduces the absolute level of unaccounted for volumes in EIA's monthly balances for each region. EIA is initiating the new series with monthly data from January 2010 through the current reporting month, January...

Venezuela is Latin America's largest oil producer, and its economy depends heavily on oil exports. It's been been hit hard by the tumbling oil prices. "Venezuela is in desperate straits. The oil sector has been deteriorating, and now with the slumping oil prices, they needed cash desperately," says Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C.-based group that studies the region. Shifter says it's no surprise that Venezuela is trimming back a program that provides oil at subsidized, deferred payment rates to many of its Caribbean neighbors that are dependent on energy imports. Petrocaribe — an alliance...

Not so long ago, advanced drillships costing more than half a billion dollars each and capable of operating in ever-deeper waters practically guaranteed big profits for oil-rig operators. Now, with oil prices down by half since June, many have become a burden on their owners as drilling activity slows. Drillship operators face a more brutal hit to margins than they did after the oil-price crash of 2008 because of the huge cost of maintaining the more than $10 billion worth of state-of-the-art vessels that have been idled at sea, analysts say. Noble Corp Plc, Ensco Plc and Transocean Ltd are...

Production from U.S. unconventional plays—boosted by advances in completion technology and techniques—has undoubtedly transformed the oil and gas scene both in the U.S. and abroad. However, low recovery rates for shale oil and gas plus steep declines for wells show there is still room for improvement. Some are turning to microseismic and refracks to better results given today’s market conditions. “Beating the decline curve in unconventional reservoirs requires continuous drilling and completion of new wells. This can be costly and time consuming,” Sudhendu Kashikar, vice president of completions evaluation for MicroSeismic Inc., explained in a webcast this week. “Refracking provides...

As U.S. crude oil stockpiles soar, CME Group Inc. has come up with an innovative way for energy producers to reserve space in storage facilities. The ability to trade oil futures contracts has been around since 1983, but on Monday, the first ever oil-storage futures contract goes live. One contract bestows upon its holder the right, but not the obligation, to store 1,000 barrels of crude oil in caverns or above-ground tanks in Louisiana. Three grades of sour crude are eligible to be held at these facilities, which are connected to 50 per cent of the United States’ refining capacity...

A decision on whether to allow the Keystone XL Pipeline to be built in the U.S. could come at any time, but there are myriad other projects on the table designed to do exactly what Keystone XL was designed to do: transport Canadian tar sands oil to refineries. Those pipelines, both in the U.S. and Canada, are being designed to move the oily bitumen produced from the tar sands to refineries in Texas and eastern Canada, and to ports on the Pacific Coast where the oil could be shipped to Asia. Combined, the pipelines would be able to carry more...

As the Obama administration weighs where to sell offshore drilling leases from 2017 to 2022, the oil industry has a single plea: Stop ruling out potential prospects. Eight industry trade groups are delivering that message in comments set to be filed with the administration on Monday, ahead of a midnight deadline for the public to weigh in on the Interior Department’s draft proposed offshore leasing program for 2017 to 2022. “Considerable acreage has already been excluded at this early stage of the planning process, especially in the Atlantic, eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska outer continental shelf,” said the groups,...

<p>BNSF has started taking additional safety measures for crude oil shipments because of four recent high-profile derailments in the U.S. and Canada, the railroad said Monday.</p> <p>Under the changes, BNSF is slowing down crude oil trains to 35 mph in cities with more than 100,000 people and increasing track inspections near waterways. The Fort Worth-based railroad also is stepping up efforts to find and repair defective wheels before they can cause derailments.</p>

Q: Why is Yemen important to the world oil market? Yemen is only a small oil producer, but it lies at the heart of some of the most important energy routes. It shares a long border with southwest Saudi Arabia, world’s top oil exporter, and is adjacent to the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the fourth-biggest shipping chokepoint in the world by volume. About 3.8 million barrels a day of petroleum passed through the strait in 2013, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Closing the strait could keep tankers in the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal and the SUMED...

Shale debt, falling prices and slack demand has tight oil producers in trouble. And yet, there is still burgeoning production. Why? Well, we’ve seen this before. It’s the shale debt redux. Operators did it a few years ago in natural gas and prices have yet to recover. Unfortunately cheap money in the form of debt can mean poor investment choices for businesses and for investors. But it can also lead to an aberrant market because operators deep in debt won’t curtail production even though it is glutted. Debt coupons simply have to be met. The shale revolution has always been...

We live in an amazing modern world of turn-key solutions. Especially in America, we have an astounding variety of tools, technology and instant access to information at our finger tips for solving our day-to-day problems. While many of these assets are convenient, they can make us mentally lazy if we let them. We could start to think that being in possession of the "right" or "best" equipment will solve our problems for us. To help shake off this mass media languor, here are a few tips to consider when sharpening up your concealed-carry mindset: Concealed Firearms Do Not Make Us...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a March 19 letter, called on the nation’s governors to reject the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulation that requires states to dramatically restructure their electricity systems based on how the agency thinks electricity should be produced and used in each state. The EPA’s demands under the proposed Clean Power Plan, McConnell noted, are “far beyond its legal authority.” In a letter to all 50 governors, McConnell wrote that he has “serious legal and policy concerns regarding the proposal.” McConnell asked the governors to “carefully review the consequences before signing up for...

An environmental review of a proposed Washington coal port will be delayed until 2017, one year after the analysis was scheduled to be completed. The delay comes after the project's developer, SSA Marine, submitted an updated plan for the Gateway Pacific Terminal to the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers. SSA Marine acquired more land in the area of the proposed dock and reconfigured its site plan, said Bob Watters, a company executive. The move will reduce the project's overall footprint by 17 percent and its impact on wetlands by 49 percent, he said. "From an environmental standpoint, we thought it...

Despite mounting protests, Japan continues to finance the building of coal-fired power plants with money earmarked for fighting climate change, with two new projects underway in India and Bangladesh, The Associated Press has found. The AP reported in December that Japan had counted $1 billion in loans for coal plants in Indonesia as climate finance, angering critics who say such financing should be going to clean energy like solar and wind power. Japanese officials now say they are also counting $630 million in loans for coal plants in Kudgi, India, and Matarbari, Bangladesh, as climate finance. The Kudgi project has...