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New Rules, Cheap Energy Heighten Battle Between Coal and Gas

ENLARGE A coal-fired power plant in Wyoming. The dispute over whether coal is a clean fuel isn’t merely semantic. Photo: JIM URQUHART/REUTERS HOUSTON—Tough new environmental rules and cheap energy prices are heightening the battle between coal miners and natural-gas pumpers over which fuel will dominate the U.S. power market. At the IHS CERAWeek global energy conference here, there were some heated words on both sides of the debate. “Cleaner coal, there’s no such thing,” Eldar Saetre, chief executive of the Norwegian oil giant Statoil ASA, told an audience of hundreds of people, most of them employed in the fossil-fuel industry. He added climate-conscious electric companies should burn natural gas instead. “The only thing that gets tense is when somebody like the head of Statoil makes a comment like there is no such thing as clean coal,” said Gregory Boyce, CEO of Peabody Energy Corp., one of the largest coal […]

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Upper East Coast US Senate, House members oppose Atlantic leasing

Observing both Earth Day and the fifth anniversary of the Macondo deepwater well accident and crude oil spill , US Senate and House members—largely Democrats from Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states—introduced bills to stop federal offshore oil and gas leasing off the Atlantic coast. The measures were responses to the US Bureau of Ocean Management’s draft proposed 2017-22 Outer Continental Shelf management program, which would include a single Mid-Atlantic lease sale in 2021 ( OGJ Online, Jan. 27, 2015 ). “Imagine the devastation an oil spill in the Atlantic would cause—not just to my home state of New Jersey, but to states up and down the East Coast,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), primary sponsor of S. 1042, the Clean Ocean and Safe Tourism (COAST) Anti-Drilling Act. “The Jersey Shore’s tourism industry alone generates $38 billion/year and directly supports almost half a million jobs,” he said in an Apr. 22 […]

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US Shale Fracklog Triples As Drillers Keep Oil From Market

Drillers in oil and gas fields from Texas to Pennsylvania have yet to turn on the spigots at 4,731 wells they’ve drilled, keeping 322,000 barrels a day underground, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis shows. (Bloomberg) — Think the U.S. is awash in crude now? Thank the fracklog that it’s not worse. Drillers in oil and gas fields from Texas to Pennsylvania have yet to turn on the spigots at 4,731 wells they’ve drilled, keeping 322,000 barrels a day underground, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis shows. That’s almost as much as OPEC member Libya has been pumping this year. The number of wells waiting to be hydraulically fractured, known as the fracklog, has tripled in the past year as companies delay work in order to avoid pumping more oil while prices are low. It’s kept crude off the market with storage tanks the fullest since 1930. The fracklog may slow a recovery […]

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Lavrov: Charges against Gazprom are baseless

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says charges that Russian energy company Gazprom abused its market position in Eastern and Central Europe are without merit. File Photo by UPI/Maryam Rahmanian. MOSCOW, April 23 (UPI) — Charges from the European Commission that energy company Gazprom abused its market position are "absolutely inadmissible," Russia’s foreign minister said. Markets rules in the Europe discourage energy companies from controlling both transit arteries and the reserves they carry. Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner in charge of competition policy, said Gazprom was "abusing its dominant position" in the European market. Gazprom in a Wednesday statement said the charges are baseless , adding it "strictly" follows the rules of the countries in which it operates. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin was confident both sides could resolve the issue, but noted the government would work in defense of Gazprom’s interests . "The argument is simple: […]

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Europe’s Oil Companies Eyed for Takeover

ENLARGE LONDON—Europe’s biggest independent oil companies are flush with energy assets, but battered by the collapse of crude prices . Investors are now betting on which one could be the next big acquisition target, following Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s deal earlier this month to buy BG Group PLC for $70 billion. Many analysts have been predicting a wave of deals in the wake of that blockbuster and after last year’s sharp fall in the price of oil . Europe’s bevy of exploration and production companies sits at the top of the list of potential targets. Those include Tullow Oil PLC, the U.K.’s largest independent oil explorer; Genel Energy PLC, which produces crude in Kurdistan; and Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum AB, which has a stake in a huge new North Sea development. Investors are expecting deals in the U.S. as well. Possible prey include some of the relatively small but highly […]

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Opinion: Oil Price War May Benefit both US Shale and Saudi Arabia

« GM provides technical details of the Gen 2 Voltec propulsion system used in the 2016 Volt | Main | Aventine sends first unit-train shipment of ethanol from Nebraska to Alabama » Even as financial commentators on CNBC are starting to come around to the idea of a bottom in oil prices, the key question for US oil producers remains one of timing. How long will the oil price slump last? Is this a relatively short term event like 2008, or a longer term slump like the one in the mid 1980’s? After the oil price crash in 1985, it took almost twenty years for prices to revert to previous levels. If oil does not return to $100 a barrel until 2035, there will be a lot less shale companies around. Some market commentators have cited hedging as a potential source of safety for oil producers, but the truth […]

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Musings: Oil Patch Unemployment Is Challenge For Industry’s Future

Oil patch layoffs continue to grow, and the shale oil states represent the epicenter. G. Allen Brooks takes a look at the latest oil industry unemployment statistics. This opinion piece presents the opinions of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Rigzone. Several recent media stories have focused on rising petroleum industry layoffs in response to the decline in global oil prices and the resulting fall in activity. Just how many people have already lost their jobs is difficult to accurately determine. Job loss estimates are being provided to the media by various personnel recruiting firms, although there are also data points available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Since oil prices began dropping last December, energy companies have announced layoffs in excess of 100,000 jobs, according to The Wall Street Journal. It references an estimate of at least 91,000 layoffs having already occurred according […]

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Overview of Our Energy Modeling Problem

We live in a world with limits, yet our economy needs growth. How can we expect this scenario to play out? My view is that this problem will play out as a fairly near-term financial problem, with low oil prices leading to a fall in oil production. But not everyone comes to this conclusion. What were the views of early researchers? How do my views differ? In my post today, I plan to discuss the first lecture I gave to a group of college students in Beijing. A PDF of it can be found here:  1. Overview of Energy Modeling Problem . A MP4 video is available as well on my  Presentations/Podcasts Page . Many Limits in a Finite World We live in a world with limits. These limits are not just energy limits; they come in many different forms: All these limits work together. We can work around […]

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How OPEC could lose the oil wars

But American drillers could ultimately benefit from the pressure to become more competitive. And OPEC, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia, may end up regretting its effort to push down oil prices and destabilize American drillers. “We’re wounded but we’re not dead, for sure,” Gary Evans, CEO of Texas-based driller Magnum Hunter Resources ( MHR ), tells me in the video above. “If their goal was to crush the US oil and gas industry, that isn’t going to happen. We are a very resilient industry.” Oil prices, currently around $57 per barrel, are about 45% below peak prices from last June. Normally, when oil prices fall, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations cut back production, to help support prices. But they haven’t done that this time, with aggressive levels of production largely viewed as an effort to force some U.S. drillers out of the market and make sure […]

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The Biggest Problem Remains Over-Population

The Biggest Problem Remains Over-Population thumbnail Today, Earth Day, behooves all of us to give serious consideration on alleviating the horrific problems that plague our world, and threaten to make it uninhabitable in a very short term. At the root of all the problems, including fouled water, polluted air and soil, melting glaciers, severe crowding – not to mention mass panic migrations (such as claimed over 850 lives this week) is overpopulation . Already multiple lines of research are questioning the UN estimates that project a global population of 10.9 billion by 2100. If, however, women – mainly in the poorest nations and without access to contraceptives, have even 0.5 more offspring each  (than projected)  that 2100 estimate could turn into 12.3 billion or even 15.8 billion. The latter pointing to a certain ‘Soylent Green’ world. Meanwhile, Adrian Rafferty of the University of Washington, publishing in a recent issue of Science, computed there’s […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple