Natural gas revolution continues to fuel CERA buzz

Adding to a dominating industry perspective in recent days on an impending energy revolution, energy executives on Thursday insisted that the American natural gas boom is real and will reshape power supplies for the nation’s cars, homes, phones and even the Internet.

“We probably don’t have 100 years, we probably have 200 years supply,” G. Steven Farris, CEO of Houston-based oil and gas producer Apache Corp., told an audience on the fourth day of the IHS CERA Week energy conference at the Hilton Americas in downtown Houston. “What is really happening with respect to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling is we’ve opened up areas of rock that have never been able to produce and that has tremendous impact on the reserves of natural gas.”

Energy ministers, state governors, and executives from some of the largest energy companies in the world have made bold pronouncements throughout the week on the anticipated impact of America’s substantial natural supply.

The supply is likely to play a major role in electricity, as well as in vehicles, executives said.

Thomas Farrell, CEO of Virginia-based power utility Dominion Resources, told the audience in a morning session that his company is pursuing more power production from natural gas, although it would likely account for no more than 40 percent of the utility’s power generation to maintain a diverse energy portfolio.

“Some of these machines that are being built now — we’re building one that’s 1,300 megawatts will burn 250 decatherms a day,” he said. “I don’t even know what a decatherm is, but that sure sounds like a lot of gas to me.”

Although Farris said the abundant U.S. natural gas supply will likely keep prices low and predictable, Farrell said power companies would likely prefrain from overexposure to natural gas.

“If you start putting those (natural gas generators) in all over the place, prices will not stay low forever,” Farrell said. “So we welcome it, but it makes us a little nervous that people are going to try to make us go in the direction of all gas so that my successors 10, 20, 30 years from now are going to look back and say, I sure wish they didn’t go all into natural gas.”

Shell to make LNG available as marine fuel, starting in U.S. Gulf market
http://www.marinelog.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1306%3A2011sep00072&Itemid=107
September 7, 2011

Shell has revealed plans to make Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) available as a transportation fuel in a number of key markets. It is actively developing new business opportunities with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to substitute LNG for diesel and propane in a number of industrial sectors including marine and oil and gas drilling applications.

Today Shell reported it has reached a Joint Cooperation Agreement with Wartsila North America to further improve the environmental footprint of the U.S. marine industry, as well as other sectors, by accelerating the deployment of larger engines which use LNG as a fuel. Shell will provide low-cost and low emissions LNG fuel to a broad range of operators of Wartsila natural gas powered vessel and other customers. Under the agreement, the partners will focus first on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and then expand their efforts.

One Gulf Coast operator that has already announced that it will build LNG fueled OSV’s is New Orleans headquartered Harvey Gulf International Marine).

Shell also said it has reached a Cooperation Agreement with GE’s transportation division to jointly develop a total solution for railroad including associated infrastructure and a locomotive capable of running on both diesel and LNG.

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