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Section of Pipe in California Oil Spill Removed

Volunteers clean up the oil spill at Haskell’s Beach in Goleta, Calif., on Wednesday. Workers on Thursday removed a section of a crude-oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled more than 100,000 gallons of oil off the Santa Barbara County, Calif., coast last week. The piece of pipe will be sent to an independent laboratory in Ohio to determine what caused it to fail, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The agency ordered and supervised the removal and will station an inspector at the lab to observe the metallurgical testing. The pipeline will be shipped in two segments—one 19 feet long and the other 31 feet long, said PHMSA spokeswoman Artealia Gilliard, adding that the amount of time it takes to conduct the tests and analysis can vary. “There’s no definite timeline,” she said. She declined to provide details on the condition of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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U.S. economy likely shrank in first quarter, but fundamentals strong

WASHINGTON The U.S. economy likely contracted in the first quarter as it buckled under the weight of unusually heavy snowfalls and a resurgent dollar, but activity since has rebounded modestly. The government is expected to report on Friday that gross domestic product shrank at a 0.8 percent annual rate instead of growing at the 0.2 percent pace it estimated last month, according to a Reuters survey of economists. A larger trade deficit and a smaller accumulation of inventories by businesses than previously thought will probably account for much of the expected downward revision. With growth estimates so far for the second quarter around 2 percent, the economy appears poised for its worst first half performance since 2011. Economists, however, caution against reading too much into the expected slump in output. They argue the GDP figure for the first quarter was held down by a confluence of temporary factors, including […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Alberta Wildfires Burn For 6th Day, 10% Of Oil Sands Crude Offline

CALGARY, Alberta, May 28 (Reuters) – Firefighters battled wildfires in northern Alberta, Canada’s biggest crude-producing region , for a sixth day on Thursday, with two blazes near oil sands facilities still out of control. The wildfires have forced producers in the Western Canadian province, the largest source of U.S. crude imports, to shut in 233,000 barrels per day of crude production, around 10 percent of total oil sands output. The biggest fire, on the Canadian military’s Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, had grown in size to 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) from 17,000 hectares on Wednesday. That blaze has forced Cenovus Energy Inc and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd to shut down production and evacuate staff from their Foster Creek and Primrose oil sands projects. Janelle Lane, a wildfire information officer at the Alberta government, said the fire had advanced to roughly 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) away from Cenovus’s Foster Creek […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Big US Shale Field Marcellus Faces Output Drop Due To Low Gas Prices

May 28 (Reuters) – Natural gas production in the Marcellus shale, which has grown over the past decade from next to nothing to the source of about a fifth of U.S. output, may decline for the first time if prices in the basin remain low for much longer, according to federal government data. Such a reduction may be worrisome since the United States is counting on the Marcellus to continue producing vast amounts of cheap gas needed to meet growing demand from industrial customers and power generators, and to enable the country to transition into a net gas exporter by 2017. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says production in the fast-growing field in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is set to remain flat for the next few years before beginning a very slow decline primarily because of depressed gas prices. Recent data supports signs of a slowdown. The number of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Will Homeowners Shell Out Thousands for Super Batteries?

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk sees a future in which super batteries change the world , making solar power available at night and turning homes into tiny utilities. Kellie Haynes, an event planner in Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few Americans who already lives in that world. She says she loves the benefits but didn’t have to cover all the costs. Whether people are willing to pay thousands of dollars apiece to join her remains one of the biggest questions hanging over Mr. Musk’s Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA 1.62 % and other companies jumping into the budding business of electricity-storage batteries. Ms. Haynes lives in a year-old house with solar panels and a battery system that cost her nothing—the $25,000 system designed by San Francisco company Sunverge Energy Inc. was covered by government subsidies and utility incentives , according to developer Pacific Housing Inc. that built her 34-house neighborhood […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Sodden Spring Eases Texas’ Yearslong Drought

DALLAS—This week’s devastating Texas floods capped an exceptionally wet spring for the Lone Star State that has effectively ended its yearslong drought. Eighty-two percent of Texas was drought-free as of May 26, up from just 11% a year earlier, according to U.S. Drought Monitor estimates released by the government Thursday. None of the state remained in severe drought. May is already the wettest month in recorded Texas history, averaging 7.54 inches of rain, beating the record of 6.66 inches set in June 2004, according to state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. Some counties north of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area have received more than 20 inches. Formerly shrunken lakes and reservoirs are brimming with water—to the point where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was strategically releasing water from many to reduce flooding, even before this week’s torrential rains. And the rainy […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Continental Resources Aggressively Cuts Costs

Continental Resources: 2015 Q1 Continental Resources announces first quarter results that highlights increases in production and reduced costs. In a press release on May 6th, Continental reported a net loss of $132.0 million for the first quarter of 2015 and a production increase to 206,829 boed. Most impressive is the company’s drilling and completion costs , which fell by 15% since 2014 year end. The company expects to see service cost reductions of up to 20% by mid-year and further savings from drilling and completion efficiencies. One example of these efficiencies is the new company record for drilling in the Bakken as they report drilling the two-mile lateral portion of a well in three days, nearly four days faster than its average time to drill a lateral. Bakken Highlights for First Quarter Production averaged 135,538 Boe per day (39% increase over first quarter 2014) Completed 66 net wells Operated an […]

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Chevron shareholders vote for political spending

SAN RAMON, Calif., May 28 (UPI) — Chevron’s top executive said the company would vet the shoot down of proposals to spend less on political maneuvering and more on environmental issues. Chevron stockholders voted on 13 items , with just under half of them tied in part to political or environmental issues. More than 70 percent of the shareholders voted against reports on lobbying and nearly all of them voted against an end to using corporate funds for political purposes. On environmental issues, 91 percent voted against a proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and 80 percent voted against a move to consider an independent director with environmental expertise. "The board will consider the final voting results carefully," Chairman John Watson said in a statement. Chevron has pressed for expanded options for exports of natural gas produced from domestic U.S. resources. A special permit is required to send liquefied […]

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EPA issues clean-up order for California oil spill

Workers continue the cleanup along Refugio Beach as efforts continue to remove the oil that has spilled an estimated 100,000 gallons off the Santa Barbara County coast in Goleta, Calif. on May 22, 2015. A unified command center established for the spill said the worst-case estimate is that 2,500 barrels of oil was released from a pipeline operated by Plains All American. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo SANTA BARBARA, Calif., May 28 (UPI) — The U.S. federal government issued an order to Plains All American Pipeline to ensure the California coastline is restored after last week’s oil spill. As much as 2,500 barrels of oil was released from Line 901 in Santa Barbara last week, a pipeline owned and operated by Plains All American. About 500 barrels may have reached the waters off the coast of Refugio State Beach in a release the Environmental Protection Agency said […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Frac sand industry booming

USGS studies find the United States holds big lead in use of frac sands, with most of the minerals coming from western Great Lakes states. Map courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey WASHINGTON, May 28 (UPI) — While the shale phenomenon may be spreading, a U.S. Geological Survey report finds the United States will continue to lead in the use of sand for fracking. Natural sand grains are mixed into hydraulic fracturing fluids to prop open fractures in underground shale deposits to release trapped oil and natural gas. Advances in hydraulic fracturing, known also as fracking, has put the United States, and Canada to a certain extent, in leadership positions in terms of oil and natural gas production. The North American frac-sand market is a $2.2 billion industry and is expected to expand by as much as 8.9 percent each year through 2016. The United States by next year […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple