Free Republic

The U.S. should speed up its approval process for new liquefied gas export terminals if it wants to remain competitive against other countries eagerly preparing to supply the world with gas, a natural gas trade association argued Thursday. America’s Natural Gas Alliance on Tuesday called on the federal government to revamp its lengthy and expensive permitting process for projects aimed at exporting supercooled gas to foreign markets, arguing that such exports are in the country’s national interest. “The time is now for the U.S. to seize the day,” alliance President and CEO Marty Durbin said in a conference call with...

Full title: AP: Offshore wells buried during Hurricane Ivan have been leaking oil into the Gulf since 2004 Down to just one full-time employee, Taylor Energy Company exists for only one reason: to fight an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that has gone largely unnoticed, despite creating miles-long slicks for more than a decade. The New Orleans-based company has downplayed the leak’s environmental impact, likening it to scores of minor spills and natural seeps that the Gulf routinely absorbs. But an Associated Press investigation has revealed evidence that the spill is far worse than what Taylor — or...

The Obama administration is eyeing an auction of offshore oil drilling leases along the East Coast in 2021, but that’s not enough to keep the United States competitive with other Atlantic nations, a Shell executive told Congress on Wednesday. “The Gulf of Mexico has kept the United States globally competitive for decades,” Mark Shuster, Shell’s executive vice president of upstream Americas exploration, told a House Natural Resources subcommittee. “The U.S. stands to lose a lot if we don’t make new acreage available.” At issue is the Interior Department’s draft plan for selling oil and gas leases on the U.S. outer...

Rosneft broke another world record Tuesday after drilling the world’s longest well at the Chayvo field off the coast of Russia’s Sakhalin Island. The O-14 production well was drilled to a record breaking depth of 44,291 feet with a horizontal reach of 39,478 feet. The well is part of the Sakhalin-1 project that includes the offshore Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi fields. Since the start of drilling at Sakhalin-1 the company has broken nine world records including setting two consecutive records for measured depth in 2013. Russia’s Rosneft said the extended reach drilling was among the fastest ever thanks to ExxonMobil’s...

Access to images perhaps similar to those that captivated viewers in real time around the world during the Deepwater Horizon disaster would be standard procedure under a new set of proposed federal offshore guidelines. These include the live monitoring of deepwater and high-temperature/high pressure drilling activities, similar to what is currently used onshore. “The real-time monitoring requirement ensures that the operator has access to onshore technical expertise if needed and that there is ‘another set of eyes’ available during critical operations,” according to the statement. Houston personal injury lawyer Charles Herd, a partner at The Lanier Law Firm, which represented...

...While there are a lot of myths that surround this technology...the biggest one myth, is that, it’s new technology. The History of Fracking can be traced back to 1862. It was during the battle of Fredericksburg VA., where civil war veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts saw what could be accomplished when firing explosive artillery into a narrow canal that obstructed the battlefield. This was described as superincumbent fluid tamping. On April 26th, 1865, Edward Roberts received his first patent, for an “Improvement” in exploding torpedoes in artesian wells. In November of 1866, Edward Roberts was awarded patient number 59,936, known...

The shale oil bonanza that made millionaires from Texas to North Dakota is slowing down for the first time in years, a sign that painful industry cutbacks are starting to have an impact. The nation’s oil production is set to slip this month by 57,000 barrels a day as natural declines in older shale wells outpace gains from newly drilled wells, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly drilling report on Monday. More than 70,000 barrels of oil a day are expected to be lost from April to May in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, South Texas’ Eagle Ford...

As Japan promises the United Nations it will cut carbon dioxide emissions, the country simultaneously plans on building 43 coal-fired power projects to make up for shuttered nuclear power. Japan told the reporters it would cut carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent below 2013 levels by 2030, reports AFP. It joined a U.S.-led effort to build support for a global warming treaty to be approved this December in Paris. It’s an issue President Barack Obama has staked his legacy on, and is using whatever diplomatic tactics he can to get other countries to join him. So far, only 35 parties (when...

The U.S. energy industry dramatically increased the pace at which it’s slowing activity, laying down 42 oil rigs this week after several weeks of more conservative numbers. There are 760 oil rigs operating in the U.S. currently, down from 802 last week, according to data published Friday by oil field services company Baker Hughes. The decline was the largest one-week drop in the count in a month. Last week, the oil rig count fell by just 11, and the week before it was down by 12. Those were the smallest week-over-week declines in 2015 and may have suggested the oil...

There are nearly 1,400 wells in the Eagle Ford Shale that have been drilled but not completed, according to new analysis from the firm IHS. Oil prices are hovering around $50 per barrel, down by half since last summer. And some Eagle Ford oil producers have been drilling but not fracking wells. The delay in completing wells avoids sending new barrels of oil into a cheap market. For a small handful of operators, IHS reports that the drilled-but-not-completed wells will give them a big advantage over competitors. Nearly 40 percent of those 1,400 delayed wells have a break-even costs below...

Ohio's energy mix is about to change, the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out, with six gas-fired plants on the drawing board and older coal-fired generation set to retire. The accelerated retirement of many coal plants is a nationwide trend, driven by low natural gas prices and EPA pollution regulations. About 60,000 MW of coal fired generators are expected to be offline by 2020, according to the EIA, due largely to the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), and, once it is finalized, the carbon regulations under the Clean Power Plan. The state is also wrestling with energy efficiency standards,...

he US Department of Energy announced Thursday afternoon that it has awarded contracts for the delivery of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to BP and Noble Energy so as to replenish oil it sold last year (see below). With a capacity of 727 million barrels, the SPR is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil in the world. Together, the SPR crude oil and facilities represent a $26 billion investment in energy security ($21 billion for crude oil and $5 billion for facilities). Founded in the wake of the 1973-74 oil embargo, the SPR provides the...

OPEC's strategy of holding output steady is not working and the group's members should discuss production levels before its next meeting in June, Iran's oil minister said, a sign of the pain lower prices are causing OPEC's less wealthy producers. However, Bijan Zanganeh also told Reuters it was up to other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to make way for any extra Iranian crude that reaches world markets if Western sanctions on Tehran are lifted. Oil prices have halved from the $115-a-barrel level hit last June, in a drop that deepened after OPEC refused to...

Private equity firm EnCap Investments has closed its tenth energy fund with $6.5 billion to back North American oil and gas producers, the latest firm to collect billions to pump into the shale business. The Houston firm this week joined Blackrock, Walburg Pincus, Riverstone and others in raising more than $25 billion in recent months, according to data collected by Bloomberg, aimed at the battered oil industry after a nine-month slide in crude prices. Many investors see bargains in the business while assets are cheap and oil prices are low. EnCap said its Energy Capital Fund X was “significantly oversubscribed.”...

The Whiting Refinery Modernization Project is the largest and most complex upgrading project in BP’s recent history. BP asked Mammoet to assist in the massive undertaking filled with logistical, constructional and meteorological challenges. Mammoet accepted the job, taking on the handling, management, transport and installation of a large number of components built in factories all over the U.S. For five years, Mammoet coordinated logistical activities on-and-off-site to safely complete the construction as efficiently as possible. Almost every processing unit in the refinery had to be modified to some degree. Carrying out the many individual jobs was relatively easy as compared...

It comes down to this: Which do we think is more important, families or fish? ...With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could have been avoided. Droughts are nothing new in California — the state has suffered from them for centuries. The difference now is that government policies are making it much worse. Despite the awareness around this issue, liberals continue to develop and promote policies which allow much of California’s rainfall to wash out to sea. Specifically, these policies have resulted in the diversion of more than 300 billion gallons of water away from farmers...

Texas refineries churning out gasoline and diesel — and selling the bounty overseas in record levels — helped make the Lone Star State an export leader in 2014, according to new government data. About a fifth of Texas’ $289 billion in exported goods last year were petroleum and coal products — about $59.1 billion worth — according to a report from the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative. “Texas is leading the way,” Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker told reporters on a conference call to discuss the report Thursday. “They support more than 1.1 million jobs through exports.” Other national leaders...

Falling oil prices and a slowdown in the energy sector have meant stagnant oil and gas wages, with workers in the Houston area taking the biggest hit, according to a new study. The oil and gas industry saw the lowest annual wage growth of any industry, just 0.8 percent based on first quarter figures analyzed by PayScale Inc., which tracks wage data. That number is in stark contrast from the historic wage growth of the industry. Since 2006, oil and gas workers have enjoyed a 19 percent increase in wages, the most of any industry. Houston’s wages also showed signs...

Iran hopes to resolve differences with Chinese energy companies on oil and gas projects in the Islamic republic, as Tehran wants to be ready to raise output quickly after a potential lifting of sanctions... The officials are in China this week to discuss Chinese investments in oil and gas developments in Iran, as well as oil sales, just days after world powers and the OPEC member reached a framework nuclear deal. The talks come ahead of a visit to Beijing by Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, his first since assuming his post two years ago. Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil...

...Output will average 9.37 million barrels per day (bpd) in April and the same in May before falling to 9.33 million bpd in June and 9.04 million bpd by September, the EIA predicted in the April edition of its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).... Production is forecast not to exceed this month's level for another 18 months. The EIA has cut its forecast for the end of 2016 by 230,000 bpd compared with three months ago... It is unlikely a halving of the rig count can be completely offset by greater target selectivity and other efficiency improvements such as employing only...