Anti-FTAA Protesters Clash With Police In Miami

Chevron is restarting a shale drilling campaign in Romania, which has met resistance from the local population. As many as 300 riot police are patrolling the site. [Natural Gas Europe]

Platts’ Brian Scheid has written an interesting piece on the Department of Energy’s latest LNG export approval, for an additional 0.4 billion cubic feet per day from the Freeport LNG project, 1 bcf/d less than requested, with little explanation as to why. “If the DOE can prevent Freeport from shipping another 1 Bcf/d from its Texas facility it would stand to reason that it could also limit shipping 1.7 Bcf/d from Cameron LNG’s facility in Louisiana or even more from other pending export proposals,” writes Scheid. [Platts]

President Obama has approved the reversal and expansion of the Cochin pipeline, which will be reconfigured to ship condensate to the Canadian oil sands, where it is used as diluent to ease the movement of bitumen through pipelines. This has prompted at least one analyst to suggest that this may augur well for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline carrying bitumen to the US. The story cites RBC capital Markets analyst Robert Kwan as saying that “we find the approval interesting as it is for a pipeline that will move a product that should facilitate oil sands growth”. [Financial Post]