Free Republic

The price of energy is dirt cheap right now: U.S. natural gas prices are at their lowest levels since 2012, and oil prices worldwide are near six-year lows . Leave it to the Pentagon to make the cost of delivering cheap energy ridiculously expensive. A compressed natural gas automobile filling station in Afghanistan that should have cost about $500,000 ended up costing $43 million, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The watchdog agency said Monday it discovered the cost overrun during a review of the Defense Department's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations ( TFBSO...

As the above quote from 2014 indicates, some Russians have identified Russia’s future with Mr. Putin. In turn, Mr. Putin in the past has identified Russia’s future with its mineral resources, in particular its crude and natural gas resources, writing that they will drive Russia’s economic future, its ability to catch-up with developed economies, and its ability to modernize the Russian military and military industry. Consistent with securing Russia’s future (and presumably, therefore, his), Mr. Putin in May 2014 signed an agreement with PRC President Xi Jinping to supply 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas annually to China...

The General Dynamics shipyard in San Diego delivered the world's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered containership to TOTE Maritime on October 16. The 764-foot long Isla Bella is the first of the Marlin class, a new class of container ship built in the United States, making it Jones Act-qualified for shipments between U.S. ports. The ship was built by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, a division of General Dynamics. Delivered nearly two months ahead of schedule, the Isla Bella will operate out of Jacksonville, Florida, providing service to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The second ship of...

While the last decade of oil and gas development has been largely contained to the shale regions of Pennsylvania, the next phase will tunnel through the midstate. Company men have been showing up at doorsteps throughout the region, asking for pieces of private property where pipelines can be built. After 10 years of drilling, shale operators have more natural resources than the infrastructure to deliver it. There's now more supply than demand, and pipeline builders are seizing the opportunity and submitting plans for an underground network to move through Pennsylvania. "These projects are absolutely crucial, especially given the fact that...

New Mexico’s oil and gas industry may be in the doldrums now, but state and economic development officials are laying the groundwork for a rapid comeback when markets improve. Gov. Susana Martinez released a new energy plan for New Mexico in September that calls for broad infrastructure development in the state’s Permian Basin in the southeast and the San Juan Basin in the northwest to facilitate oil and gas development. That includes road improvements, new pipelines to transport crude and natural gas, and possibly a new 100-mile rail line running from Interstate 40 in Gallup to Farmington. It also calls...

King Coal may be losing its throne sooner than expected, as the U.S. goes through a change in how it gets the bulk of its electricity. The change is not coming from solar and wind as environmental groups would like to believe, although renewables are growing. The big switch is coming from natural gas produced from fracking shale rock deep underground. Natural gas is replacing coal as the dominant way Americans receive electricity to power everything from their lights to their iPhones to the big screen televisions. It is cheaper than coal, which is why natural gas power plants are...

A Massachusetts woman apparently botched some home repairs yesterday and blew her house to smithereens, WBT reports. Lucky for Laurie Beliveau, 52, she fled her property in Taunton, Mass., minutes before the explosion. "We, my son and I, got her a pair of sandals and a glass of water and within about five minutes the house was in flames and the windows exploded," says Paul Saltalamacchia, a neighbor who saw her crying for help. Seems that Beliveau was trying to fix her hot water heater—which was gas-fueled—when she took off the gas shut-off valve, according to fire officials. That allowed...

U.S.-based Cheniere Energy doesn't believe it will become Europe's leading liquefied natural gas (LNG) player despite bullish export plans. The company, headquartered in Houston, is at the forefront of what is being called a U.S. energy renaissance with plans to churn out its first batch of LNG for overseas shipments in the next few months. Export production volumes at its Sabine Pass export terminal are expected at 27 million metric tons per year (mmtpy), a number set to rise to 60 mmtpy by 2025. That's sparked market talk of whether Cheniere could overcome Russia to become Europe's leading supplier once...

Banks, when reporting earnings, are saying a few choice things about their oil-and-gas loans, which boil down to this: it’s bloody out there in the oil patch, but we made our money and rolled off the risks to others who’re now eating most of the losses. On Monday, it was Zions Bancorp. Its oil-and-gas loans deteriorated further, it reported. More were non-performing and were charged-off. There’d be even more credit downgrades. By the end of September, 15.7% of them were considered “classified loans,” with clear signs of stress, up from 11.3% in the prior quarter. These classified energy loans pushed...

The Sierra Club should start printing retractions (something they’ve been getting a lot of practice doing), because researchers from Yale University have concluded that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, doesn’t contaminate drinking water! “[There is] no evidence of association with deeper brines or long-range migration of these compounds to the shallow aquifers” concludes the new study, which was published in the highly prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The study, the largest of its kind, sampled 64 private water wells near fracking sites to determine if they could be contaminated by fracking fluids. “[The chemicals] are likely not a...

Governor Palin weighs in on Obama’s failed ISIS strategy: OBAMA’S IMPOTENCE; WHY HE CAN’T "DRILL, BABY, DRILL" Obama destroys our own oil development and pipeline proposals (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/24/obama-keystone-veto/23879735/), and vows to bankrupt our American-made energy industry (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/11/02/hidden-audio-obama-tells-sf-chronicle-he-will-bankrupt-coal-industry), but is impotent against a crazy Muslim cult’s crude wealth-generating oil infrastructure. Memo to Obama: you could destroy ISIS in a heartbeat if you wanted to. These desert rats aren’t running a covert oil operation – their rigs, pump stations, gathering centers, separation facilities, pipelines, value-added refineries, trucks and transportation corridors are right there under your nose. Bomb them. Let the United States Military do...

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Latvian PM Laimdota Straujuma, Polish PM Ewa Kopacz, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite Polish PM Ewa Kopacz, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia Thursday in Brussels signed a financing deal that will allow the construction of the Gas Interconnector Poland-Lithuania (GIPL) – the first gas pipeline linking the Baltic region with the EU energy market. The pipeline to be built by December 2019 will reduce Baltic States' dependence on Russian gas. Once it is built, it will connect the Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian gas network with the EU.

Construction or preliminary work has begun on three new pipelines designed to flow new supplies of natural gas from Azerbaijan to consumers in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. For more than a decade, companies have been announcing proposals to build new natural gas pipelines to connect natural gas resources in Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East with consumers in southern Europe. In contrast to the three new pipelines considered in this article, most of these projects have failed to advance. These three new or expanded pipelines would reach from Azerbaijan's eastern edge on the Caspian Sea to Italy's southeastern...

A proposed new rule unveiled by the Obama administration would require by 2025 a 40 to 45 percent reduction from 2012 levels in methane emissions from new and modified oil and natural gas wells. Unlike methane regulations passed in 2012, the new rules would regulate methane emissions throughout the oil and gas industry, including production processing, transmission, and storage. The regulations would force a reduction in the amount of methane escaping into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” by requiring the use of equipment to capture these emissions from new oil and gas wells. Much like the...

As Europe seeks to diversify its sources of natural gas as an alternative to the politically sensitive Russian supply, a massive off-shore gas source in the Mediterranean is ready for exploration and drilling. There are game-changing stakes at play. Unfortunately, the Turkish leadership has threatened to use force to stop this from happening. Last October, Turkey sent the BARBAROS, its geophysics exploration ship, accompanied by naval vessels, into the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone waters. In November 2014, Turkish naval commander Admiral Bülent Bostanoğlu threatened the use of force against Greece, while speaking on board a Turkish naval corvette in Greek...

New gas fields add more heat to already simmering Mediterranean CAIRO — Some observers speculate that gas exploration activities in the Mediterranean will create a new axis of conflict in the region. The conflict over gas reserves in the Mediterranean has pushed Cairo to rush to find solutions to the demarcation of the overlapping maritime border between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Summary The recent gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean Sea have given the concerned countries, mainly Egypt, Turkey and Israel, a new urgency in settling their maritime border disputes. Author Walaa Hussein...

The amount of electricity generated from natural gas surpassed the share of coal-fired production in July in the U.S. for the second time. The first time was for the month of April, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration. The EIA reported Wednesday that the share of electricity coming from natural gas-fired power plants hit 35 percent in July. It was 34.9 percent from coal plants. The shift comes as the ongoing domestic shale boom produces lots of natural gas at relatively cheap prices. At the same time, few new coal plants are being built nationally because of increasing federal regulations...

Cheniere Energy has started the monthslong process of preparing its $18 billion Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export terminal to crank out its first batch of super chilled gas for shipment overseas. The Houston-based company received permission from federal regulators to pipe natural gas into the sprawling plant on a remote stretch of coastline along the border between Texas and Louisiana as it starts priming the first production facilities for start-up. Last week, Sabine Pass LNG began bringing in small amounts of natural gas and burning some off, a process called flaring, providing early signs that the first phase of...

Most U.S. households can expect lower heating expenditures this winter (October through March) compared with the past two winters. In most regions, the decline in expenditures is attributed to the combination of warmer weather and lower fuel prices. According to EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook, average household expenditures for homes heating primarily with natural gas will total $578 this winter, a $64 decline from last winter's average. Homes primarily using propane are expected to spend $1,437 this winter ($322 less). Homes heating primarily with heating oil are expected to spend $1,392 ($459 less). Homes heating primarily with electric heat are expected...

The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine, reached a supply agreement in the last week of September with the EU’s largest fuel supply partner: Russia. One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure than ever before, a sharp contrast to the icy winters of 2006 and 2009, in which Russia cut off natural gas supply to Eastern Europe over a conflict with the Ukraine. The following factors have turned the European natural gas market from a ‘’beggars can’t be choosers” into a true “buyers’...