Free Republic

Peaceful protesters sought to stop plan to store natural gas in New York lakeEnvironment activists in New York have enlisted the help of the Holy Father to help further their cause. Thirteen protesters arrested while forming a human blockade around a gas storage facility in Seneca Lake, New York, on August 4, were “reading from Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’” according to AlterNet. The protesters were trying to bring attention to a proposal to store “tens of millions of gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, and up to two billion cubic feet of natural gas, in abandoned subterranean...

The creator of the award-winning film ‘Gasland’ was just arrested at a protest in rural New York. Here’s the mini-documentary he made on the eve of his arrest. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Josh Fox, who wrote and directed the acclaimed fracking film Gasland, was arrested this afternoon while engaging in a human barricade at a natural-gas storage facility in the Finger Lakes. “People need to see what’s happening at Seneca Lake, and also understand that this isn’t isolated, it is happening everywhere,” Fox told The Daily Beast before the protest. “We need to educate people that our dependency on fossil fuels...

The United States is poised to flood world markets with once-unthinkable quantities of liquefied natural gas as soon as this year, profoundly changing the geo-politics of global energy and posing a major threat to Russian gas dominance in Europe. "We anticipate becoming big players, and I think we'll have a big impact," said the Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary. "We're going to influence the whole global LNG market." Mr Moniz said four LNG export terminals are under construction and the first wave of shipments may begin before the end of this year or in early 2016 at the latest....

Phillips 66 is planning to build a liquefied petroleum gas export terminal in Freeport, Texas, a $1 billion push to tap international markets for refined products used in gasoline blending and heating, the company said Thursday. The Houston-based oil refiner said it plans to assemble an export capacity of 4.4 million barrels per month by 2016, about the size of eight very large gas carries. That’s nearly a fourth of the capacity that two proposed Enterprise Products Partners LPG terminals in the Gulf Coast are expected to have in late 2015. Phillips 66 expects to build the facility, which is...

Trade fraud is an increasing problem for Vietnam's gas industry, said Tran Trong Huu, deputy general secretary of the Vietnam Gas Association, at an online discussion in Ha Noi last week. Market watch teams dealt with 400 gas trading violations in the first eight months of the year, confiscating over 15,000 gas tanks and collecting penalties that totaled 2 billion dong (US$95,200). Many enterprises used fake gas tanks to pump gas themselves from remote areas, said Do Thanh Lam, deputy head of the ministry's Market Management Department. Huu said that authorities were too lax in granting licences to gas businesses....

Though Ratih, a 44-year-old resident of East Jakarta, felt fortunate to find a 3-kilogram gas cylinder for her stove, she was alarmed at how much the price had gone up since she last purchased one. “It’s difficult to find [these] cylinders … I went quite far to find one. The price is going up, though. I paid Rp 18,000 [$1.83] this time, whereas I paid Rp 15,000 last time,” she said on Saturday. Another East Jakarta resident, Wanah, was in the same boat. Though the price of a 12-kg gas cylinder went up by Rp 20,000, she had no choice...

SNIPPET: "Indonesian anti-terror police, Densus 88 secure a terror suspect's house during a raid in Mojosongo, Solo in Central Java. Indonesian police have arrested 11 members of an Islamic group allegedly planning attacks on American diplomatic missions, a spokesman says." SNIPPET: "The group had planned to hit the US embassy and a US consulate, as well as a building near the Australian embassy in the capital Jakarta that houses the office of American mining giant Freeport-McMoran, police said. Police said they were from a new outfit called HASMI, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, and explosives and a bomb-making manual...

The world's largest ethylene production complex, the Jam Petrochemical Plant, has been opened in the southern Iranian city of Asalouyeh. The complex will boast of an annual production of 1,321,000 tons of ethylene, which is widely used in industry and medicine, IRNA reported. The Jam Petrochemical Plant will increase its production to 4.2 million tons within the next few years. The complex was inaugurated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was accompanied by Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari, on Sunday in his visit to the port city of Asalouyeh -- home to Iran's giant South Pars gas field in the Persian...

Businessman cheats death after his LPG car explodes in a ball of flames when he lights a cigarette doing 30mph ...Company manager Peter Tidbury, 50, escaped with hardly a scratch after he lit a cigarette and a blast blew out the windows and door panels of his Peugeot 607. The windscreen was blown 50 feet down the road... Peter, 56, suffered minor burns... He said yesterday: 'It just wasn't my day to die.' The wreckage of Mr Tidbury's LPG car after it exploded into a fireball Narrow escape: Mr Tidbury walked away from the fireball suffering only minor burns Mr...

Freight rates to ship LPG from the Middle East to Japan have fallen to their lowest in 20 months, tumbling from a record high of $82/mt in late July to $22.44/mt Thursday. The drastic decease in freight prices was due to the lack of spot cargoes moving out of the Middle East and lower bunker fuel prices, VLGC ship brokers said. "The Saudis don't sell any spot tons now, and the market looks dark at least until Christmas. Many of the VLGCs are in the spot market are totally dependant on tons that are not on contract," a VLGC ship...

NCI’s estimate of proved and recoverable resources is significantly larger than other estimates. Results from the NCI study are represented in the right-most bar. US natural gas shale basins and gsa pipeline networks. A study released by the American Clean Skies Foundation (ACSF) and conducted by Navigant Consulting, Inc. (NCI) concludes that the United States has 2,247 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas proved reserves and unproved technically recoverable resources, including major contributions from unconventional resources from three sources: tight sands, coalbed methane and especially from shale. Reserves at that level would supply natural gas for 118 years...