Free Republic

Editor’s note: This is the first in a 10-part series produced by the Alaska Support Industry Alliance to educate the public about liquefied natural gas. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas converted to its liquid form. When natural gas is cooled to minus-259 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a clear, colorless, odorless liquid. LNG is produced by taking natural gas from a production field, processing it to remove impurities, and then liquefying the processed gas. LNG isn’t corrosive or toxic. It doesn’t explode or burn as a liquid. Natural gas is primarily methane, with low levels of other hydrocarbons,...

DAEGU, South Korea — Asia’s large-scale gas importers, long saddled with premium prices, say a cheaper alternative lies several thousand feet below North American soil, where companies are unlocking enormous gas reserves from shale rock. The shale boom has already revolutionized the gas market in the United States and Canada, giving both countries not only a reliable domestic supply but also the ability to sell overseas. Asian utility and gas company executives, speaking this week at a global energy forum here, have said that North America’s gas wealth could prove nearly as transformative across the world, leading to the first...

(Reuters) - Japan plans to start up 14 new gas and coal-fired power plants by the end of 2014, allowing a switch away from pricey oil, as Tokyo struggles with a shutdown of nuclear reactors and energy imports drive a record trade deficit. Regional power monopolies will construct 12 gas-fired units next year, while two new coal power plants will be completed by December 2013, according to a Reuters survey of utilities. The new power plants will buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal to scale back on the use of expensive crude and fuel oil plants. They will also...

OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia is preparing to be among the first countries outside North America to use shale gas for power generation and thereby save more of its crude oil for lucrative exports. Inspired by a shale gas boom in the United States, which has transformed the country from the world's largest gas importer to a budding exporter, Riyadh plans to take its first steps to commercialise its own large unconventional deposits. "We are ready to start producing our own shale gas and unconventional resources in various types in the next few years and deliver them to consumers," Saudi Aramco...

Highlights EIA projects average U.S. household expenditures for natural gas and propane will increase by 13% and 9%, respectively, this winter heating season (October 1 through March 31) compared with last winter. Projected U.S. household expenditures are 2% higher for electricity and 2% lower for heating oil this winter. Although EIA expects average expenditures for households that heat with natural gas will be significantly higher than last winter, they are still lower than the previous 5-year average (see EIA Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook slideshow). Brent crude oil spot prices fell from a recent peak of $117 per barrel...

A natural gas pipeline fire in rural northwest Oklahoma was extinguished on Wednesday morning with no injuries reported, and the company that owns it, Northern Natural Gas, is working to determine the cause of the blast, a company spokesman said. The fire occurred at 11 p.m. CST on Tuesday (0400 GMT Wednesday) in a remote and rural area in Oklahoma's panhandle, and could be seen up to 50 miles away, according to local media reports. No injuries were reported. About "a half dozen" area volunteer fire departments responded to Tuesday night's blaze, said Mike Loeffler, spokesman for Northern Natural Gas....

Soon old-school diesel locomotives could be replaced by ones powered mainly by liquified natural gas. GE Transportation presented retrofit technology that enables locomotives to use both diesel and liquid natural gas at Railway Interchange 2013, the North American rail industry’s largest trade show and technical conference, the International Railway Journal reported. The system allows up to 80 percent natural gas substitution. The LNG is cryogenically stored in a tender and enables trains to travel further without refueling. New LNG powered locomotives will allow many industry players to meet stringent Tier 4 locomotive emissions standards set to take effect Jan. 1,...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday slightly raised its estimate for domestic natural gas production in 2013, expecting output this year to be up about 1.2 percent from 2012's record high levels. In its October Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA said it expected marketed natural gas production in 2013 to rise by 0.82 billion cubic feet per day to 70.00 bcf per day, up fractionally from its September outlook of 69.91 bcf daily. If the forecast is realized, it would be the third straight year of record production. Domestic output in 2014 is expected to set another record high,...

An energy industry association criticized a petition launched by Rep. Raul Grivalva (D-Ariz), calling on Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack to halt drilling and mining on public lands while U.S. government employees and visitors to national parks remain locked out during the federal government shutdown. “Shutting down private-sector productive activities on public lands, which return more revenue to taxpayers than the government spends administering the programs, is the wrong direction for the federal government at a time of fiscal difficulties,” said Kathleen M. Sgamma, vice president of government & public affairs with the Western...

The Brayton Point Power Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in New England, is shutting down amid a prolonged slump in energy prices that is forcing power operators nationally to rejigger their budgets and seek out more affordable production strategies. The closure will result in 240 job losses at the Somerset, Mass.-based facility. Its owner, an affiliate of New Jersey-based private equity firm Energy Capital Partners, said in a statement that steps would be taken to mitigate the effects of the job cuts for Brayton Point’s former workers....

The T. Boone Pickens-backed Clean Energy Fuels has launched a “new” kind of clean and green automotive fuel called Redeem. You wouldn’t know it from the breathless coverage of this product in the New York Times, but there’s nothing new in the chemical and physical composition of this — it’s simply compressed natural gas. CNG has been marketed in the U.S. since at least 1980. Around the world there’s some 17 million cars and heavy vehicles that run on the stuff. So what’s different about Redeem? Because of where the natural gas ostensibly comes from, it’s greener than your average...

The companies seeking to advance a multibillion dollar natural gas pipeline project in Alaska have a leading contender for the terminal site where gas would be liquefied and shipped to Asia, signaling that a decades-old dream could still become a reality. Exxon Mobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and TransCanada Corp. announced Monday that the Kenai Peninsula town of Nikiski is the leading contender. Senior project manager Steve Butt said there are three or four other sites are still being considered — he declined to identify those — but said Nikiski has the land needed for the plant and the companies know they...

More than a third of all new natural gas wells since 2005 were drilled in Texas, and the state uses almost four times as much water for hydraulic fracturing as any other state, according to a study by a Texas environmental group. Operators in Texas drilled 13,540 wells in 2012, and have drilled more than 33,000 since 2005, according to an Environment Texas report, which focuses on potential hazards and pollution associated with the drilling technology. Hydraulic fracturing in the state has required more than 110 billion gallons of water since 2005, compared with 30 billion for second-ranking Pennsylvania. The...

This opinion piece presents the opinions of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Rigzone. The head of the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the data collection arm of the Energy Department, projects that the U.S. will become the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the world this year if it hasn’t done so already. "This is a remarkable turn of events,” said Adam Sieminski, the head of the Energy Information Administration. “This is a new era of thinking about market conditions, and opportunities created by these conditions, that you wouldn't in a million years...

The question of whether natural gas is a ‘clean’ fuel is hotly debated amongst food columnists and the current U.S. Secretary of Energy alike. The debate has been fueled by scientific uncertainty; measuring methane emissions has been difficult because data is hard to obtain. But a new study released last week by the University of Texas (UT) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), addresses this challenge head-on. In the most comprehensive shale gas emission study ever undertaken, the researchers found that extracting gas from shale is being done in a sustainable, environmentally friendly fashion. The study found that 99 percent...

Well, this week I’ve left the cold climates of Moscow for something a little warmer, and I find myself in Singapore. It’s been an exhausting two week trip, but what an opportunity, and it’s one of only several great upsides that make up for all the hard work! Last week I wrote a piece prompted by a reader who wanted some advice on how to choose between the multiple job offers he had received from companies in the oil & gas industry. The response was overwhelming to say the least: tons of LinkedIn requests and emails, so thanks very much...

U.S. Is Poised to Overtake Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer By RUSSELL GOLD and DANIEL GILBERT CONNECT The U.S. is poised to overtake Russia as the world's single largest producer of oil and natural gas combined this year, a startling shift that is reshaping energy markets and eroding the clout of traditional petroleum-rich nations. Shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas have fueled a comeback for the U.S. that was unimaginable a decade ago. Russia meanwhile has struggled to maintain its energy output and has yet to embrace the technologies such as hydraulic fracturing that have boosted U.S. reserves. The...

North America will become energy independent by 2020 because of booming oil and gas production, which will have consequences worldwide, according to an analysis from Wood Mackenzie. “The decline, and eventual reversal of North American net trade will have complex impacts on global energy flows, some of which are already becoming apparent,” said Paul McConnell, senior analyst for Wood Mackenzie’s global trends service, in a statement. The region that will feel the largest impact of declining North American demand for imports will be the Middle East, the Houston research firm said. “The Middle East is the most sensitive to changes...

Understanding the "change of the stock change" While avid college football fans eagerly await the Tuesday morning update of team rankings, crude oil and petroleum product market watchers often focus on the Wednesday morning release of the U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) Weekly Petroleum Status Report (WPSR). Although the WPSR provides comprehensive details about U.S. crude oil and key petroleum products covering all sectors of the primary supply chain, many analysts often focus exclusively on the crude oil inventory change data point, using falling or rising crude stocks as an indicator of the relative tightness or looseness of crude oil...

A California liquefied natural gas producer is set to build a production plant in North Texas that could initially produce 86,000 gallons of fuel per day. Applied Natural Gas Fuels said Wednesday the plant in Midlothian, about 30 miles south of Dallas in Ellis County, would fire up in 2015 seeking to attract buyers in high-horsepower, trucking, oil and gas and similar industries that normally consume diesel fuel. A boom in U.S. natural gas production has made LNG competitive with diesel for such uses. The Midlothian plant will be the company’s first in Texas. It is also doubling production at...

Turkey’s Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa seismic vessel, which has been conducting offshore oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, could enter Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone in three weeks to continue exploration pending prime ministerial approval, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said. “The Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa is drilling off the coast of the Mersin-İskenderun-Antalya region. It will work there, for three weeks more. Later, we will speak with Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] as to whether it will enter Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone. If the prime minister approves, the vessel could enter to the north or south of Cyprus because it...

Royal Dutch Shell has picked a site in Louisiana for a plant costing at least $12.5 billion that would turn natural gas into diesel, jet fuel and other liquids, the Louisiana governor’s office announced Tuesday. Shell said the project, which is no sure thing, could help to harness more domestic natural gas to make transportation fuels. The company will continue to consider the option before making an investment decision at the site in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, according to the news release. The plant would offer the benefit of displacing oil used to make fuels and other products and lowering emissions,...

The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates there are 2,203 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas in the United States. To put that number into perspective, last year we used about 24 trillion cubic feet. That means we have enough natural gas to last about 92 years. However, it's more than likely there is even more gas out there waiting to be discovered or unlocked by technological advances. Bottom line, we have plenty of gas. Not only that, but there are two big reasons why we really should be using more of it...

BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The State Council, China's cabinet, on Sunday issued a guideline on exploration of coal bed gas. Subsidies from central government shall be raised in the sector, with full consideration on costs and prices in extracting coal bed gas, said the government's website. The specific subsidy standards will be fixed jointly by departments including the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration. Favorable tax policies will also be mapped out to boost coal bed gas exploration.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are expected to agree to increase Canadian shale gas exports to Japan from around 2020, Japanese officials said Sunday. Canada’s envisioned shale gas exports are likely to total 40 million tons a year. The gas will be shipped after being processed into liquefied natural gas, the officials said. Abe and Harper plan to reach the agreement in a meeting on Tuesday in Ottawa during the Japanese leader’s five-day visit to Canada and the United States from Monday.

If things go badly in the oilfield, there’s the further potential for them to go REALLY badly. Incidents such as the Exxon Valdez spill, the Piper Alpha fire, and the Macondo blowout show that as an industry there is always an underlying risk we have to manage, and that we must accept as a society in exchange for our use of hydrocarbons. Every time an incident does happen, people are outraged, and rightfully so: I can’t imagine how I would feel if I lost someone close to me, or if my home or community was heavily damaged. After this initial...

STOCKHOLM — Scientists working on a landmark U.N. report on climate change are struggling over how to address a wrinkle in the meteorological data that has given ammunition to global-warming skeptics: The heating of Earth's surface appears to have slowed in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. For years, skeptics have touted what looks like a slowdown in surface warming since 1998 to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are cooking the planet by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing. So it must be OK to frack now. In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades. Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value...

Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE ) has jumped more than 7% during trading over Tuesday and Wednesday as investors applaud two major catalysts for the stock. For one, CEO Andrew Littlefair just purchased 127,000 shares, valued at approximately $1.6 million. Investors always like to see management with skin in the game, so to speak. It's a vote of confidence in the company and also aligns CEOs with shareholders' interests. Additionally, the company announced a joint venture with industrial giant General Electric (NYSE: GE ) to develop liquefied natural gas projects throughout the United States. Motley Fool analyst Taylor Muckerman appreciates...

Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that has created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market, it seems, does it better than the EPA. Environmentalists find themselves between shale rock and a hard place after a little noticed technical report documented how the natural gas boom caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has actually helped the environment in a major way while also creating jobs and economic growth. In the report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said...

Green Field Energy Services, which pioneered the use of turbine engines for hydraulic fracturing, has completed its first hydraulic fracturing job powered solely by natural gas tapped from a nearby well. Working with Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., the companies used field gas to complete fracturing jobs on a Marcellus Shale well in Pennsylvania, according to a news release from the companies. The companies completed multiple fracturing stages using pumps powered by natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing pumps fire millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, into rocks deep underground, causing them to crack and release oil and natural gas....

This week that the Department of Energy (DOE) tentatively approved a fourth non-FTA permit to export liquefied natural gas (LNG). Secretary Moniz is credited with improving the speed with which his Department has moved on exports, having approved three permits in his short tenure compared to one under his predecessor. The Department of Energy’s approval of non-FTA permits is just the first step in the process of bringing U.S. natural gas to the world market, so a lot is riding on its approval stamp. Without the DOE’s approval, U.S. natural gas exports – and the important economic benefits – will...

One of the many arguments that the rabidly anti-fracking, eco-radical crowd have been using to try and discredit hydraulic fracturing as a welcome boon to both our environment and our economy is the claim that the process itself leaks an unacceptable amount of methane into the atmosphere. Methane, they insist, is an especially potent greenhouse gas, so that on net start-to-finish evaluation, natural gas really isn’t any cleaner than coal and those studies about natural gas contributing so hugely to the United States’ recently decreased carbon emissions can’t really be that accurate.Unfortunately for them, a brand new study concludes that...

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said that fracking in the US has lessened demand for their oil, and that they need to begin to find other income sources. In a letter to oil minister, Ali al Naimi and other top government officials, Alwaleed said that fracking was responsible for the declining demand for oil from OPEC. Alwaleed recommends that the oil rich country, should diversify immediately before the impact gets to be out of hand. He says that the Saudi's dependence on oil income is, "a truth that has really become a source of worry for many".

For decades, coal from West Virginia’s vast deposits was mined, loaded on rail cars and hauled off without leaving behind a lasting trust fund financed by the state’s best-known commodity. Big coal’s days are waning, but now a new bonanza in the natural gas fields has state leaders working to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. West Virginia’s Senate president, Jeff Kessler, is pushing to create an oil and natural gas trust fund to support core government functions decades from now. His goal: a cushion of funds long after the gas is depleted to buoy an Appalachian mountain state chronically vexed...

Syria is about the last gasp for the Petro-Dollar, the emergence of energy pipeline geopolitics, the rise of the NatGas Coop, the new dominance of Russian Gazprom, the eclipse of OPEC, the fall of the house of Saud, and a grand adjustment process in global commerce and banking. Refer to trade settlement outside the USDollar and diversification away from USTreasury Bond reserves management. It took some time to realize it, but the Cyprus bank incident was a misdirected attack against Gazprom. It failed. The entire Arab Spring movement, an ambitious disruptive project waged with foolhardy ambitions, has turned on itself....

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an internal combustion engine that emits less than half the CO2 compared to a regular engine without compromising performance. This corresponds to fuel consumption of less than 2.4 l per 100 km. This natural gas-diesel hybrid engine is based on a system of sophisticated control engineering.The global energy markets are changing. New extraction methods are tapping into oilfields and natural gas deposits that have been inaccessible until now. The US, for example, is able to cover up to 83% of its total energy needs today; the government is even planning to increase exports...

ETH researchers redesigned the conventional diesel engine of a VW Golf to run on 90% natural gas. Credit: Tobias Ott / ETH Zurich Video at link. Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an internal combustion engine that emits less than half the CO2 compared to a regular engine without compromising performance. This corresponds to fuel consumption of less than 2.4 l per 100 km. This natural gas-diesel hybrid engine is based on a system of sophisticated control engineering. The global energy markets are changing. New extraction methods are tapping into oilfields and natural gas deposits that have been inaccessible until...

The Obama administration on Wednesday authorized natural gas exports from a fourth U.S. facility, speeding up a review process that would-be gas exporters and their allies in Congress had criticized as too slow. Dominion Resource Inc's conditional permit for liquefied natural gas exports from its Cove Point terminal on Maryland's Chesapeake Bay came just over a month after the Energy Department approved exports from a terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Dominion's was the fourth natural gas export permit issued by the administration. It was the third permit issued this year, following a pause of nearly two years in review of...

Humvee manufacturer AM General paid $3 million at auction to purchase the U.S. Department of Energy‘s loan to Vehicle Production Group, a defunct maker of wheelchair-accessible vans that struggled to meet performance targets and shut down earlier this year. Together with $5 million seized from the company’s accounts in April, that means the DOE recovered just $8 million of the $50 million it loaned VPG back in March 2011 under a government program designed to promote advanced technology vehicles. VPG’s plan was to sell handicapped vans that run on compressed natural gas. Taxpayers also took a loss on the collapse...

Why has the little nation of Qatar spent 3 billion dollars to support the rebels in Syria? Could it be because Qatar is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world and Assad won't let them build a natural gas pipeline through Syria? Of course. Qatar wants to install a puppet regime in Syria that will allow them to build a pipeline which will enable them to sell lots and lots of natural gas to Europe. Why is Saudi Arabia spending huge amounts of money to help the rebels ... ? Well, it turns out that Saudi Arabia...

Remember Sen. Rand Paul’s epic talking filibuster last spring over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes? It lasted a little bit less than 13 hours and garnered him a lot of mainstream- and social-media attention, and it sounds like he feels strongly enough about the resolution on a Syrian strike the White House is hoping to push through Congress that he’s isn’t unwilling to have another go at staging a similar Senatorial showcase. Via National Journal: Paul was not bullish on his chances of success, however, saying “it would be historic� to stop the authorization, as it has the...

Increased domestic oil and natural gas production is something “to celebrate,” as it helps pare the U.S. trade deficit and beef up the country’s economic output. That may sound like a conclusion from the oil and gas industry, but the assessment actually comes from two of the Obama administration’s top economic advisers. In a blog post on the White House website, Jason Furman and Gene Sperling assert that the decline in the petroleum trade deficit to a record low in June played a large role in the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ upward revision of second quarter gross domestic product last...

For more than two decades, the United States has placed the issue of Eastern Mediterranean maritime ­security on the backburner. But the 2010 discovery of what may potentially be 3,450 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil in the Eastern Mediterranean’s Levant Basin brings that region’s security to the forefront. Turkey and Cyprus have competing interests in tapping the newfound oil and gas and in defending their access to those resources, while Israel and Lebanon continue to dispute their shared maritime boundary and territorial waters. Against this backdrop, political tensions are escalating in Egypt, Moscow...

A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels, making it economical to tap natural-gas reserves that in the past have been too small or remote to develop. The company behind the technology, Dallas-based Synfuels International, says that the process uses fewer steps and is far more efficient than more established techniques based on the Fischer-Tropsch process. This process converts natural gas into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide; a catalyst then causes the carbon and hydrogen to reconnect in new compounds, such as...

...Fracturing, or fracking, refers to using fluid under pressure to create fissures held open by sand. Oil or gas flow back through these channels and up through a well. BlackBrush Oil & Gas LP is using a butane-rich mix for fracking after being confounded by many of the same obstacles other energy companies face in buying, moving and disposing of large amounts of water. “Ranchers don’t want to give up their water,” said Jasen Walshak, production manager at BlackBrush. The term gas liquids refers here to three fluids – propane, butane and pentane – that occur together with natural gas....

Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy said natural-gas production — with the right safeguards — is a major piece of Obama administration efforts to combat global warming. “Responsible development of natural gas is an important part of our work to curb climate change and support a robust clean energy market at home,” she said Wednesday at a speech in Colorado, according to prepared remarks. The comments are part of a wider administration effort to cast the U.S. gas production boom as a way to help slow global warming. They come two weeks after Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz rejected claims that...

Companies operating in the Marcellus and Utica shale regions say it has been a challenge to fill openings in engineering, geology, environmental health and other professional fields. The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a gas drilling industry trade group, on Wednesday released a workforce survey of more than 100 of its members. The companies said that finding qualified talent and getting prospective employees to relocate are the biggest challenges they face when it comes to hiring. Of the most difficult positions to fill, 49 percent were in professional fields and 15 percent were in management...

With all the new projects planned along the Gulf Coast, the energy industry predicts it will need 500,000 new workers between now and 2020. The industry is trying to attract and train skilled workers including electricians, pipefitters and welders. Toward that end, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute toured the apprenticeship training program of the Pipefitters Local Union 211 in Houston on Wednesday. Jack Gerard said the issue of making sure the industry has enough skilled workers is a CEO-level concern. “We want to make sure we’re prepared for the work of the future,” he said. The...

Fracking brings breathtaking economic and environmental benefits—at least to places that welcome it.Few people understand the ground better than Larry Fulmer, a soft-spoken man with flowing white hair pulled back into a ponytail. Fulmer, the hydrofracturing superintendent for Cabot Oil & Gas in Pennsylvania, knows just how much pressurized water and sand will liberate the natural gas trapped in the shale rock a mile beneath our feet. Here, in a small square field carved out of hill country in Dimock, Pennsylvania, his crew is mixing water and sand day and night. “They pull [the mixture] in at 35 to 40...