Free Republic

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has rejected a proposal to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in the waters off New York and New Jersey, effectively killing the project amid an outcry from residents of some coastal communities that it could endanger the environment and be a target for terrorists. The deep-water docking station known as Port Ambrose was to be built 19 miles off Jones Beach on Long Island and 29 miles off Long Brach, New Jersey. Liberty Natural Gas LLC, the company vying to develop Port Ambrose, said the port would allow it to inject natural gas into the New...

The number of oil and gas job losses in Texas may be far worse than an industry group originally predicted, potentially reaching 56,000, according to the latest analysis by the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. When crude prices started collapsing late last year, Karr Ingham, a petroleum economist for the alliance, initially forecast that the state could lose 40,000 to 50,000 upstream oil and gas jobs during the downturn, but the fresh plunge in oil prices over the summer forced additional round of layoffs across Texas. "We now appear to be well beyond that estimate and the end is not...

Plummeting prices for crude oil have restricted the spending power of many oil and gas companies over the last few quarters, as recent massive cuts in capital expenditures and slashed headcounts in Houston have shown. Illustrating how tight things have gotten for some companies, business research website FindTheCompany ranked firms in the U.S. by free-cash flow, which takes a company's operating cash flow and subtracts its capital expenditures. Using this metric, FindTheCompany showed that across all U.S. businesses, oil and gas producers had among the shortest strings on their budgets following the second quarter of 2015. Of the top 25...

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is reorganizing its upstream businesses in a move the company says will continue when it completes its $70-billion acquisition of BG Group next year (OGJ Online, Sept. 3, 2015). Shell also is slashing spending by the combined company. "We are reshaping the company, and this will accelerate once this transaction is complete," said Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden at a meeting with shareholders in London. Shell is making integrated gas a stand-alone organization and creating separate upstream and unconventional resources organizations. Maarten Wetselaar, currently executive vice-president of integrated gas, will be director of the stand-alone...

They've shooed pipeline surveyors from their pastures, made anti-pipeline signs for a protest at the county courthouse and at appearances by the Virginia governor. They've also kept up pressure on local officials. As the leader in this multigenerational band of family activists, Carolyn Reilly has found the experience exhilarating and bruising. "There are days when I am in tears in frustration and exhaustion," she said. "Then there are days when I'm fired up and ready to fight." From New England to North Carolina, scattered insurgencies have formed in opposition to a spider web of pipelines up and down the Eastern...

he U.S. has tied and is set to surpass a record for the amount of natural gas in storage, according to the latest Energy Department data. Inventory figures released Thursday show 3.929 trillion cubic feet in storage across the country, tying the previous weekly record of 3.929 trillion cubic feet set on Nov. 2, 2012. And with two or three weeks of additional inventory gains expected this year, it’s likely the U.S. will have a new high mark by the time the summer and fall injection season ends. The large amount of gas in storage, continued strong gas production and...

The United States’ energy renaissance is catching attention in Beijing, where Chinese leaders view the phenomenon as “a double-edged sword,” according to a white paper from the free-market group American Council for Capital Formation. “China trusted the United States more when U.S. oil import dependency was higher and Washington actively sought increases in global oil production, a mutually shared objective,” writes George David Banks, executive vice president of the group. “In Beijing’s view, the U.S. shale revolution has increased U.S. immunity to a reduction in global supply resulting from military conflict, political instability, or international sanctions, thereby making Washington a...

The state of Alaska will now own more of the big Alaska LNG Project. It will have to shell out more money for it, too. Alaska's Permanent Fund may have to be put up as collateral, also. Legislators have been meeting in special session in Juneau since Oct. 24 to review Gov. Bill Walker's proposal for the state to buy out TransCanada's share of the planned $45 billion to $65 billion pipeline and liquefied gas project. On Nov. 3 and 4, the state Senate (16-3) and House (39-0) gave their approvals. The acquisition is to be effective Dec. 1, under...

The debate over US crude oil exports provides a long-overdue chance to throw off the shackles of political gridlock. The Republican-dominated House voted last month to lift the 40-year-old ban on oil exports. President Obama vowed to veto the bill if it reaches him. However, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are showing signs of disillusionment with the increasingly indefensible ban, which rewards US refiners at the expense of oil producers and the motoring public. Still, a favor to the oil industry won't be possible without a concession, probably one that recognizes the environmental harm from enabling more US oil...

Ridiculously overbudget? Check. Unnecessary? Check. Impossible to support in the long run? Check. Zero accountability? Check and double-check. If a novelist wrote this as a satire of government operations, there wouldn’t be an editor who’d buy it — not for 43 cents, and certainly not for $43 million: Nearly $43 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money was spent on building a gas station in Afghanistan — 140 times more than it should have cost, according to a government watchdog.The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also said that one of the most “troubling” issues is how the Department of Defense...

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...