Free Republic

The German energy mix has been radically changed in recent years, predominantly driven by two forces: a desire to expand renewables’ market share (a task accomplished by generous state subsidies called feed-in tariffs), and an aversion to nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Within Germany these changes have had a number of perhaps unforeseen and certainly unfortunate consequences, including jacked-up power bills for businesses and households and, somewhat bizarrely, an increased reliance on the particularly dirty type of coal called lignite. But the ripple effects of Berlin’s energiewende are expanding past national boundaries, and, as Politico reports, Germany’s neighbors...

On Monday President Obama announced the final "clean power plan" regulation for greenhouse gas emissions from electric generating plants, the centerpiece of the broader Climate Action Plan being implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Amid the many assertions about the looming climate crisis confronting "the planet," about which more below, one central parameter was conspicuous by its absence. To wit: What effect on future temperatures---that, after all, is the supposed benefit of the rule---would this regulation provide? Interestingly enough, the president did not tell us. Nor did the EPA provide an estimate of temperature effects so obviously central to the...

Moody’s Investors Service says it expects more U.S. oil companies to default on risky corporate debt over the next few months as banks tighten lending standards and as contracts that locked-in higher crude prices for future production start to expire. Oil producers in the second quarter accounted for seven of the nation’s 15 high-yield debt defaults, a three-year quarterly high. The credit ratings agency said its oil and gas liquidity stress index — a measure of corporate financial weakness in that sector — rose to 10.4 percent in June, up from 3.8 percent a year ago. “We expect that the...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final Clean Power Plan will seek to tamp down the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the power sector by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030—about 9% more ambitious than its original proposal. The first-ever final national standards to limit CO2 from power plants, to be released today—”the biggest, most important step we’ve taken to address climate change,” said President Obama—give states more time develop and tailored plans. State plans are now due in September 2016, but states that need more time can make an initial submission and request extensions of up to two years...

A Senate panel has approved energy legislation that would lift the 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports and open some areas of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas exploration. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chairman of the panel, championed the plan to lift the restrictions. It passed by a party-line vote of 12-10. Murkowski said lifting the ban would turn the U.S. into an energy superpower.

New plants coming online are set to drive industrial natural gas growth forward by more than three percent in the next two years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in an analysis Wednesday. Industrial facilities, which include methanol and fertilizer plants, consumed an average of 21.0 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas in 2014, up 24 percent from 2009. By the end of 2015, that figure is expect to rise by another 3.4 percent to an annual average of 21.7 billion cubic feet per day. In 2016, the EIA predicted another 3.9 percent gain to 22.5 billion cubic...

The CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. says it’s still unclear when his company should go back into growth mode across U.S. shale plays. And that’s not necessarily because of volatility in the oil market, but rather because oil field service companies haven’t cut prices for equipment and other work deep enough yet. “Even with a tremendous amount of hardship that service providers have gone through in the first half of the year, we as an upstream company still don’t have the margins we had a year ago,” Anadarko CEO Al Walker said in a conference call with investors Wednesday. Analysts...

The developer of the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm installed the first steel foundation for the project off Rhode Island’s coast. The Sunday installation of Deepwater Wind Block Island Wind Farm came just in time for a Monday tour of the site that will include Obama administration officials, lawmakers and Rhode Island’s governor, among others. ADVERTISEMENT “It was a very big moment,” Jeffrey Grybowski, Chief Executive Officer of Deepwater Wind, told the Providence Journal shortly after watching the first foundation’s installation from a boat. The company had hoped to install the foundation on Thursday, but the weather did not...

Halliburton has cut nearly 14,000 jobs and Baker Hughes has laid off 13,000 employees since they began trimming their headcounts last year to cope with the oil-market crash, officials said Monday. Those figures, shown in quarterly securities filings Friday and confirmed by company spokeswomen on Monday, are several thousand more jobs than the last time the oil field service companies gave an estimate of their planned layoffs in April. Halliburton’s latest layoff estimate exceeds its April figure by 5,000 jobs, bringing its cuts up to16 percent of its workforce. And Baker Hughes’ estimate is up by 2,500 jobs, up to...

When the Green Mountain power company, Vermont’s largest utility, announced earlier this year it will be buying nuclear power from New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, many environmentalists felt betrayed. “This is exactly why we closed Vermont Yankee, because we didn’t want any nuclear power,” they complained. But consumer demands left Green Mountain with no other choice. Nuclear is the ultimate reliable source of power – reactors operate more than 90 percent of the time – and Green Mountain needs back-up in case other sources stop working or if demand exceeds supply on a hot summer day. Vermont is struggling with its...

The midstream company planning to build one of the largest crude oil storage facilities on the Gulf Coast said Thursday that it had reached a deal to fund the first phase of construction on the project in southwest Houston. Fairway Energy Partners LLC said in a release that Houston private equity firm FBR & Co. agreed to fund the first leg of the Pierce Junction storage facility, which will convert three underground salt caverns near the intersection of the 610 and 288 Freeways into crude oil storage. Fairway is backed by Haddington Ventures LLC, a Houston investment firm that manages...

The North American ocean carrier TOTE is deploying the world’s first container ships fueled by liquefied natural gas (LNG). The move anticipates imminent environmental regulations that are likely to trigger large shifts in the maritime shipping industry. TOTE is making the move to comply with the international Marpol Annex VI maritime emissions standards, first implemented in 2005. Restrictions on emissions like sulfur and nitrogen oxide will tighten in 2016 within designated emission control areas (ECAs), including the waters surrounding North America. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides are generated in large volumes by conventional maritime ships, which have long relied on so-called...

Lawmakers are eyeing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a piggy bank, but not without controversy. The Senate is considering legislation that would partly replenish the u.S. highway trust fund with $9 billion worth of sales from the reserve, which at 69S.1 million barrels of oil is close to its 713.S-million-barrel capacity. This month, the House passed a bill to sell 80 million barrels from the reserve to raise $7 billion to help pay for legislation to boost government drug approvals and research funding. But proposals to tap the nation's oil stockpile as a way to pay for unrelated government programs...

On Thursday, Iran detailed plans to rebuild its main industries and trade relationships after last week's final nuclear deal with the P5+1. The country says it is targeting oil and gas projects worth $185 billion by 2020. Iran Wants 2-Way Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, Iran's Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, said Iran would focus on its oil and gas, metals and car industries with the goal of exporting to Europe following the easing of sanctions, rather than merely importing Western technology, Reuters reported Thursday morning. "We are looking for a two-way trade as well as cooperation in development, design...

Key US senators have reached a deal on a broad package of energy sector reforms that if enacted would speed decision-making on liquefied natural gas exports, focus the intent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and require reviews of how federal rules impact electric system reliability. The agreement on the bipartisan legislative package follows a number of Senate hearings in recent months and lawmakers' consideration of more than 100 bills offered for inclusion in the wider package. The bill unveiled Wednesday is also the result of negotiations between the two leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee -- Chairman...

Weatherford International says it plans to bump its job cuts from 10,000 to 11,000, about 20 percent of its workforce, with the increase coming mostly from its U.S. support staff. The oil field services firm, based in Switzerland with main offices in Houston, said the layoffs come as the North American market continues to weaken. It had completed all but 3 percent of its previously announced cut of 10,000 jobs, it said in its second-quarter earnings release late Wednesday. “The aggregate results of these measures will help mitigate the effects of the downturn, while at the same time, take advantage...

The US Senate showed a disturbing lack of respect for US energy security on Tuesday. The upper chamber introduced a highway bill that proposes selling oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to partially pay for a three-year extension of the highway trust fund. The bill is the result of a deal between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer. Legislators project that selling 101 billion barrels from the 693 billion barrel stockpile would raise $9 billion if the government sells the oil between 2018 and 2025. The bill assumes an average oil price of...

...“The EIA has global oil demand in 2020 and beyond being met with increased supplies from a region of the world stuck in a multi-decade crisis that is likely to get much worse before it ever gets better. Supply from the short-cycle U.S. oil market is required to balance the global crude market at a rate where U.S. shale should remain a growth industry.”... There have been several key developments that set the stage for the evolutionary phase that the world has now entered: 1) development of mature fracking technologies for oil and gas shale that have made previously uneconomic...

The clock is ticking on the Obama Administration. With only 18 months remaining in his final term, federal energy planners and agency regulators are working as quickly as possible to impose new rules on the oil and natural gas industry. As one industry lobbyist told the Houston Chronicle, “The agencies are all in hyperdrive to get the rules across the finish line or have them well-positioned in the regulatory queue so that their path forward past Jan. 20, 2017, is clearly established.” The rush to increase regulations on oil and natural gas is nothing but bad news for an industry...

Ridgewood Energy is not letting $50 oil shift its aim. The energy company focused on the deep-water Gulf of Mexico closed a nearly $2 billion private equity fund that it contends will still prove profitable. Houston- and New Jersey-based Ridgewood said its new $1.94 billion, Ridgewood Energy Oil & Gas Fund III is its biggest yet and exceeded its initial $1.5 billion target. As other companies slow down their expensive deep-water Gulf investments, Ridgewood says it can find and develop oil there for $20 a barrel or less, although the break even is closer to $35 a barrel with other...