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Energy company investments in Alaska could reverse declining oil production in the state. Firms are planning the largest energy project in the state’s history along with a series of moves to rejuvenate Alaska’s biggest oil fields. That is unless, the companies are saying, voters in the state in August dismantle a new oil tax regime that Houston-based ConocoPhillips and others say makes Alaska far more attractive than it was under higher levies imposed in 2007. In a story at HoustonChronicle.com, FuelFix reporter Collin Eaton takes a look at the energy projects that area planned and issues surrounding the tax vote.

The amount of natural gas imported into the U.S. market dropped 14 percent last year in part because of abundant domestic resources, the Energy Department said. The Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, said natural gas production in 2013 hit 24.2 trillion cubic feet, which would be a new record if preliminary data are correct. EIA said in its report net imports declined in part as a response to increases in domestic production. The level of natural gas imports have declined every year since 2007, the report said, and is at its lowest level since 1989....

<p>Ukraine's gas company, Naftogaz, announced at a European Union-mediated meeting in Berlin Friday with Gazprom and the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers that it has transferred $786 million to Gazprom, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said. That covers deliveries in February and March, a period for which the price charged to Ukraine is undisputed, Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan said.</p>

Full Title: Ahead of power-plant regs, new report from the White House: Basically everything good that’s happened in the energy sector is because of us. You’re welcome. Setting the stage for upcoming restrictions on coal-fired power plants, the Obama administration is making a concerted effort to cast its energy policy as an economic success that is creating jobs, securing the nation against international upheavals and shifting energy use to cleaner sources. In a 42-page report to be released Thursday, the White House argues that significant increases in the domestic production of natural gas and reductions in oil consumption have better...

Setting the stage for upcoming restrictions on coal-fired power plants, the Obama administration is making a concerted effort to cast its energy policy as an economic success that is creating jobs, securing the nation against international upheavals and shifting energy use to cleaner sources. In a 42-page report to be released Thursday, the White House argues that significant increases in the domestic production of natural gas and reductions in oil consumption have better positioned the United States to advance its economic and environmental goals. Few of the report's conclusions are new, but it includes a detailed analysis of how past...

The EU has unveiled plans to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, with increased imports from Norway and energy efficiency at the top of its wish list. […] Although EU countries import 88 percent of the oil that they use, as well as 42 percent of solid fuel, the main concern of the commission and governments is gas—66 percent of Europe’s gas is imported at a cost of more than €1 billion per day. Of the 400 billion cubic metres of gas consumed in the EU each year, around 40 percent comes from Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. The majority of this...

Its population is growing. Its people are becoming more prosperous. It is creating both billionaires and employing more minimum-wage workers than any other state. Its energy sector has thrived—year-over-year drilling has doubled so far in 2014, with 10,000 new wells drilled just since January. Its technology corridor now extends for hundreds of miles along I-35. Texas is the hottest state economy this side of North Dakota. But some still refuse to acknowledge the Texas Miracle. The recovery benefits only the rich, they say. Pro-business means pro-big-business. Job growth has merely kept pace with population growth. But that’s just it. People...

Start with exotic Nazi technology, take a detour with South African apartheidists, and add a bit role for Iranian imams. What you have is—what else? —one of the most improbable and important American business stories of the past decade. It's the tale of a company called Sasol, the former South African state oil company, which is embarking on what could be the single-largest foreign investment project in U.S. history. Sasol is building a 3,034-acre energy complex near a bayou in Lake Charles, La. Tapping into cheap, fracked natural gas as well as the pipeline and shipping infrastructure along the Gulf...

Last week as part of a high-profile visit to Shanghai, China and before the start of the equally high-profile St. Petersburg Economic Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping oversaw the agreement of a 30-year deal for natural gas supply from Russia to China. The announcement of an agreement to the terms of this deal, which has reportedly been negotiated off and on for nearly a decade, set off shock-waves within the global natural gas market and sparked U.S. politicians' calls for speedier approval of the backlog of liquefied natural gas (LNG)export terminal projects. These faster approvals...

This doesn’t directly have anything to do with the Keystone XL pipeline per se, but it does once again highlight just how dumb that entirely trumped-up and drawn-out debate really is. America already has a network of more than two million miles worth of pipeline sprawling across the United States, but because of the recent oil-and-gas production boom brought on by technological innovations in fracking, we still need millions more as well as a whole slew of existing infrastructure updates. Without more pipelines, we’ll be working underneath entirely self-imposed restrictions on our production capacity — a phenomenon that’s already...

In Shanghai, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a spectacular energy deal — $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years. This is huge. By indelibly linking producer and consumer — the pipeline alone is a $70 billion infrastructure project — it deflates the post-Ukraine Western threat (mostly empty, but still very loud) to cut European imports of Russian gas. Putin has just defiantly demonstrated that he has other places to go. The Russia-China deal also makes a mockery of U.S. boasts to have isolated Russia because of Ukraine. Not even...

In a symbolic blow to U.S. global financial hegemony, Russia and China took a small step toward undercutting the domination of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency on Tuesday when Russia’s second biggest financial institution, VTB, signed a deal with the Bank of China to bypass the dollar and pay each other in domestic currencies. The so-called Agreement on Cooperation — signed in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is on a visit to Shanghai — was followed by the long-awaited announcement on Wednesday of a massive natural gas deal 10...

Russia signed an estimated $400 billion deal with China to supply 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually for as long as 30 years in a move seen as a long-term strategic decision to re-orientate the country’s energy exports. As the European Union pushes forward with energy diversity and tensions high over Moscow’s aggressive policy towards Ukraine, it appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin found a constant buyer on the nation’s eastern border, capping off almost a decade of negotiations. The deal also shows that Putin is taking seriously the possibility of tougher economic sanctions from the West. In...

<p>BEIJING--Moscow and Beijing signed a contract to supply China with hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian natural gas, in a long-stalled deal that could give Russian President Vladimir Putin a boost as his relations with the West have sharply soured.</p>

SHANGHAI (AP) — China signed a landmark deal Wednesday to buy Russian natural gas worth about $400 billion, giving a boost to diplomatically isolated President Vladimir Putin and expanding Moscow's ties with Asia. Price negotiations on the 30-year deal continued into the final hours of a two-day visit by Putin to China, during which both sides had said they hoped to sign an agreement. Putin was in Shanghai for an Asian security conference where China's president called for a new model of Asian security cooperation based on a regional group that includes Russia and Iran and excludes the United States....

MEMO TO OBAMA: CHECKMATE : SHANGHAI, May 21 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and China agreed on a long-term gas supply contract in Shanghai on Wednesday, after years of talks on the deal, worth billions of dollars. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Director of the Chinese National Energy Administration Wu Xinxiong signed an intergovernmental memorandum on the mutual understanding in gas deliveries field through the eastern route. Earlier today, Russia’s gas major Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a contract of purchase and sale of natural gas deliveries through eastern route, a RIA Novosti correspondent said. Gazprom...

After 10 years of negotiations, Russia's Gazprom and China's CNPC have finally signed a historic gas deal which will provide the world's fastest growing economy with the natural gas it needs to keep pace for the next 30 years. The total value of the contract is $400 billion, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said. However, the price of gas stipulated in the document remains a "commercial secret." Assuming the overall price of the contract includes only the cost of supplies of Russian gas, then the $400 billion price tag means China will pay about $350 per 1,000 cubic meters. Delivery price...

China signed a landmark deal Wednesday to buy Russian natural gas worth about $400 billion, giving a boost to diplomatically isolated President Vladimir Putin and expanding Moscow's ties with Asia. Price negotiations on the 30-year deal continued into the final hours of a two-day visit by Putin to China, during which both sides had said they hoped to sign an agreement. Putin was in Shanghai for an Asian security conference where China's president called for a new model of Asian security cooperation based on a regional group that includes Russia and Iran and excludes the United States. The gas deal...

A pipeline to transport gas to Ukraine via Slovakia should be ready for pumping at full capacity starting in September, the head of Slovakia's pipeline operator said. EU member Slovakia, and Ukraine, signed a deal at the end of April that allows the European Union to send a limited amount of gas to Ukraine - but less than Kyiv had hoped for, in order to cushion the blow, should Russia turn off the gas [read more].

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping of China and the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, were unable to announce an agreement on a natural gas deal on Tuesday, despite high expectations that mutual political interests would help finally push through the project.