Eideard

Shale gas deposits

The U.S. government will require natural gas drillers to disclose which chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing on public lands, according to draft rules crafted by the Interior Department…

Companies would be required to disclose the “complete chemical makeup of all materials used” in fracking fluids under the Interior Department’s draft rules, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters…

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that companies use the fracking technique on about 90 percent of wells drilled on federal lands.

The proposed rules would also require drillers to ensure the stability of underground casing in wells and that waste water from fracking does not leak into the environment.

The Interior Department has said it is moving ahead with the rules but has not offered a specific timeline for when they will be released. Once the proposal is officially issued, the department will get feedback before finalizing the regulations…

Fracking has helped companies tap vast reserves of natural gas that could turn the United States into an exporter of the fuel. But environmental groups and some residents near fracking operations say the process pollutes the water and air…

The energy industry complained that the draft rules were overkill as companies were voluntarily revealing the fluids. U.S. law does not require disclosure of fluids used in fracking on federal lands…

One of the largest natural gas drillers, Chesapeake Energy Corp, said it has been voluntarily disclosing its information on chemicals for nearly a year on all its wells on public or private lands on a web site called www.fracfocus.com .

Some of the drillers – like Chesapeake – support voluntary disclosure. In general, I believe corporate commitment to transparency is about as realistic as the sun rising in the West or the leadership of the Republican Party suddenly accepting guidance from the National Institute of Science.

Not on your tintype, Nellie! I choose regulation and oversight.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

President Barack Obama pitched a plan on Thursday to boost U.S. use of natural gas and open more land for offshore drilling during a campaign-style tour aimed at bolstering confidence in his economic stewardship.

At a stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Democratic president sought to counter Republican criticisms of his energy policies as he proposed tax incentives for companies to buy natural gas trucks, which would help build demand for abundant domestic supplies of the fuel…

Obama said the United States needs an “all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above strategy” to develop energy resources at home and that doing so would create American jobs…”A great place to start is with natural gas,” Obama said during a visit to a UPS facility in Las Vegas, which received stimulus funding to invest in liquefied natural gas vehicles and build a public LNG refueling station.

“We’ve got a supply of natural gas under our feet that can last America nearly a hundred years,” he said. “Developing it could power our cars, our homes, and our factories in a cleaner and cheaper way. The experts believe it could support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade…”

Using domestic natural gas as a cleaner alternative to importing foreign oil has been heavily promoted by Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens and has attracted support from both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Still, Obama’s natural gas truck proposal, which would need congressional approval, could face an uphill battle to make it into law. Republicans, campaigning on promises to cut government spending, would likely resist costly energy subsidies…

Obama also announced that the Interior Department will hold the last scheduled offshore lease sale of the government’s current five-year drilling plan in June, offering 38 million acres for development in the central Gulf of Mexico…

Analysts said those results were a sign that drilling is rebounding in the Gulf after the administration temporarily shut down deepwater exploration after the BP disaster.

The Oil Patch Boys are still whining, of course, about oversight and regulations being resumed. They became accustomed to doing just about anything they wished during the Bush/Cheney years. Reality began to return with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – not that oil companies ever cared much for reality if it hinders profits.

We have the first natural gas-powered bus fleet in the country here in Santa Fe and it is a boon keeping our clean air clean. The cost in gasoline equivalent has risen over the years to $1.61/gallon. With serious federal help, it could be less.

BG Group Plc will buy 3.5 million metric tons a year of liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy Partner LP’s terminal at Sabine Pass in Louisiana, bringing U.S. exports a step closer.

The 20-year contract is Cheniere’s first long-term sales agreement for exports from the terminal’s proposed plant in Cameron Parish and may help the company raise finance to begin construction of the facilities that will chill the gas, turning it into liquid for transportation, BG Group said in a statement…

Surging shale gas production has reversed declining output in the U.S., now the world’s largest gas producer ahead of Russia. Companies including Cheniere plan to convert LNG import terminals into export plants.

…Profitability of U.S. exports is determined by the price difference between gas and crude oil. Oil is sometimes used as a power generation fuel, and is also used as a reference in setting Asian long-term energy contract prices…

Shipments may start as soon as 2018, Elizabeth Spomer, senior vice president for business development, said.

Cheniere has said it plans to sell LNG to Caribbean nations for power generation to cut their dependence on crude oil. Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are among those that could save money by burning gas to generate electricity, Cheniere’s chief executive officer Charif Souki has said.

And, someday – just maybe someday – the political blockheads in Washington will realize that both American consumers and American investors would benefit from including natural gas as a leading producer of electricity in this land of ours.

I ain’t holding my breath waiting, though.

North Dakota oil operator flaring natural gas

Across western North Dakota, hundreds of fires rise above fields of wheat and sunflowers and bales of hay. At night, they illuminate the prairie skies like giant fireflies.

They are not wildfires caused by lightning strikes or other acts of nature, but the deliberate burning of natural gas by oil companies rushing to extract oil from the Bakken shale field and take advantage of the high price of crude. The gas bubbles up alongside the far more valuable oil, and with less economic incentive to capture it, the drillers treat the gas as waste and simply burn it.

Every day, more than 100 million cubic feet of natural gas is flared this way — enough energy to heat half a million homes for a day.

The flared gas also spews at least two million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as much as 384,000 cars or a medium-size coal-fired power plant would emit, alarming some environmentalists.

All told, 30 percent of the natural gas produced in North Dakota is burned as waste. No other major domestic oil field currently flares close to that much, though the practice is still common in countries like Russia, Nigeria and Iran…

“North Dakota is not as bad as Kazakhstan, but this is not what you would expect a civilized, efficient society to do: to flare off a perfectly good product just because it’s expensive to bring to market,” said Michael E. Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin…

Flaring – halted years ago – is a step backward for our domestic energy industry. Most oil and gas fields in the United States have well-developed facilities to gather and process gas as a result of conservation movements, environmental activism – and the days when Congress was pressed into caring about the health of our nation.

Those cares were sent packing by Bush the Little, refused re-entry permits by today’s Republicans and the Kool Aid Party.

The probe of diesel use in hydraulic fracturing, a practice that has allowed drillers to tap abundant shale gas, found that oil services firms such as Halliburton and BJ Services, which was bought by Baker Hughes Inc, injected millions of gallons of fluids containing the fuel into wells between 2005 and 2009. A total of 12 companies were cited in the probe for using diesel without proper permits.

Critics say the chemicals used in the process, called “fracking,” can contaminate drinking water.

In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency entered into a voluntary agreement with Halliburton, BJ Services and Schlumberger to eliminate the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing fluids injected into coalbed methane wells.

In addition, a 2005 energy law exempted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, except when diesel is used…

Democrats who sponsored the probe in the House of Representatives urged the EPA to look into this matter…

The fracking probe was initiated by House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee last year when it was headed by Waxman…

Some lawmakers have called for federal regulation of the practice beyond the use of diesel fuel, but with Republicans now in control of House such legislative action appears unlikely.

Wow, there’s a surprise.

The Republicans will probably [1] forgive the pollution retroactively; and [2] appoint a new commission to be headed by Dick Cheney and charged with reducing environmental restraints on any and all new extraction processes the Oil Patch Boys come up with.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

With the turn of a ceremonial valve, China’s president, Hu Jintao, opened a big natural gas pipeline from central Asia to China on Monday, significantly increasing China’s access to the fuel and providing the first major alternative to exporting the region’s gas through Russia.

The ambitious project runs 1,140 miles across three Central Asian nations to the Chinese border, linking Turkmenistan to the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Once inside China, it connects with a pipeline that can carry the fuel even farther east.

Though helpful to energy-parched China, the project siphons potential supplies from the long-delayed pipeline that the European Union would like to see built from Turkey to Central Europe. Such a project could also tap sources of natural gas in Turkmenistan, a stark illustration of the overlapping energy interests at play in the region.

For the China pipeline, Turkmenistan says it can supply 40 billion cubic meters of gas for 30 years once the line reaches full capacity, reported China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. That is about the equivalent of half of China’s current consumption of natural gas.

The pipeline is the first major export corridor for natural gas out of the region that does not pass through Russia. It breaks from the Soviet-era design of a pipeline system built to supply Eastern Europe via Russia to the north of Central Asia. The new pipe revives a pre-Soviet view of trade in the region, in which economic exchanges flow east and west, not just through Russia.

No doubt highest priority will be given to industrial use of this resource. China, after all, is a nation in the business of growing business.

I’ve been through that particular environmental change in my youth. It can be astounding.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Larry Persily, a veteran Alaska policy maker and former aide to former Governor Sarah Palin, to oversee plans for a massive, long-desired Alaska natural gas pipeline.

Persily, a former Alaska journalist, worked for more than a decade on oil and gas issues for three Alaska governors, including Palin, who was John McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket that lost to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in the 2008 presidential election.

Persily, currently is a resource specialist for the Alaska legislature, became a vocal critic of Palin after leaving her office. He famously likened her to Argentine icon Eva Peron…

Two groups are competing for rights and financing to build a pipeline carrying natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to domestic U.S. markets…

TransCanada and Exxon are entitled to up to $500 million in state subsidies and the state is prohibited from negotiating with other potential pipeline sponsors, under the AGIA terms..

That’s the law passed by Palin which limits bidding to just those two corporations.

The other sponsor is a joint venture created by BP and ConocoPhillips, the two other major North Slope producers. That venture, called Denali, is proceeding outside of the AGIA terms.

As well as I recall, the Canadian portion of this hookup has been ready and waiting for years. If I’m wrong, surely someone will note the correction.

Regardless, time to stop flaring and start pumping southward – is overdue.

London 1952

China is considering moving the last four coal-fired power and heating plants out of Beijing’s municipal area, replacing them with gas-fired stations…in an effort to improve air quality in the capital…

“While the heat supply to Beijing residents must be ensured, coal-fired stations that need to be relocated must be relocated, and building gas-fired plants with advanced environmental protection technologies is a first choice…”

The four plants, owned by Huaneng Power International, Datang International Power Generation Co Ltd, China Shenhua Energy and Beijing Jingneng Thermal Power Co Ltd, have a total power generating capacity of about 2.7 gigawatts.

The plan, if it is implemented, would further drive up gas demand in Beijing, which already tops demand rankings among Chinese cities. Beijing consumed more than 5 billion cubic meters of gas in 2008…

As a result, construction of gas pipelines, liquefied natural gas facilities and underground storage tanks need to be accelerated, Huang Wei, Vice Mayor, said.

That might take care of half the coal-related smog problem in Beijing. Getting natural gas in sufficient quantity to the city might finally permit the changeover that solved the rest of the same problem for London back in the day, e.g., converting home cooking and heating fires from coal to gas and electricity.

We’re not even prepared to listen to T. Boone Pickens.

Turkey and Armenia have agreed on a framework to normalize ties after nearly a century of hostility, a move that could stabilize the volatile, oil-rich Caucasus but may affect European energy security plans.

The announcement, which was welcomed by Washington, came on the eve of the April 24 commemoration of mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. The two countries have been engaged since last year in high-level talks to restore ties, which could include reopening a border closed in 1993…

The stand-off has isolated impoverished Armenia and obstructed Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union…

Turkey and Armenia did not say how they would tackle the genocide dispute, which has traumatized ties. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but denies that up to 1.5 million died as a result of genocide.

Turkish officials would not discuss the issue further.

Americans generally are quick to demand that other nations “learn how to forget the past”. I’m as guilty of that as anyone else – especially over the impenetrable wall of hate that winds through the Balkans. I smirk over the same people who switch their brains off regarding the genocide our nation committed against Native Americans. Or what the real history of the Monroe Doctrine did to the fabric of life and death throughout Latin America.

It’s always easiest for the oppressor to “forgive and forget”.

AT&T will spend up to $350 million over five years to buy more than 8,000 Ford Motor Co. vans and trucks, then convert them to run on compressed natural gas.

It is the largest commitment by a U.S. corporation to vehicles using alternative fuels, the phone company said.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but burning it produces 25 percent less carbon emissions than using gasoline, AT&T said. Compared with oil, the U.S. produces a greater proportion of the natural gas it uses.

The company said it will spend the money over five years. While AT&T will buy the chassis from Ford, it has not yet selected a vendor to perform the conversion to natural gas.

The vehicles will be used by technicians who perform installations and maintain the telecommunications network. The company will build 40 natural-gas filling stations to keep them rolling.

AT&T will also spend $215 million over 10 years to replace 7,100 passenger cars with hybrids, and eventually cars powered by other fuel sources, it said.

When they pass through Santa Fe, we already have a couple of CNG filling stations waiting for them.