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… Keep reading →
We are at a transformational moment in energy history. Just a few years ago, all energy projections forecast increased imports, increased scarcity, and increased natural gas prices. Today, we’ve shifted from scarcity to abundance. U.S. oil production has increased by 2.5 million barrels per day (B/D) since 2010. This year, the United States overtook Saudi… Keep reading →
While next year’s oil prices may be lower than this year’s, a sharp downturn in prices is not in the cards in 2014, according to Barclays analysts. “The oil market is in the midst of a turning point for fundamentals,” wrote Barclays analysts in a note to clients today. Non-Opec supply growth will exceed global… Keep reading →
Mergers and acquisitions in the North American power and utilities space is continuing to recover from a steep dropoff, with third-quarter 2013 deal activity up from second-quarter and year-ago levels. There were 12 power and utilities deals valued at more than $50 million in the third quarter, up from seven in the previous quarter and… Keep reading →
Solar poised to challenge wind’s historical dominance According to a newly released report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), 2013 is expected to become the first year in which solar PVs beat wind in terms of megawatts of new installed capacity on a global level. It is a remarkable feat for solar energy, which is… Keep reading →
NRC has resumed safety review of the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository in response to a U.S. appeals court order. On November 18, 2013, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced an Order directing its staff to complete the safety evaluation report (SER) on the Department of Energy’s (DOE) license application for the proposed Yucca Mountain… Keep reading →
We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and ate far too much yesterday… PetroChina has agreed to buy 25% of the West Qurna oil field in Iraq from ExxonMobil for an undisclosed sum. An analyst at Sanford Bernstein previously estimated the value of ExxonMobil’s 60% interest in the field at $3 billion. [Bloomberg] An easing… Keep reading →
Records are meant to be broken, no doubt about that. This includes electric vehicle records, and word out of Japan is the world record for distance traveled by an electric vehicle on a single charge may now have been broken (though there’s a little confusion on this at first glance – see below), courtesy of a team… Keep reading →
Smaller oil and gas producers have been major drivers of the US shale boom, and hedging has been critical to financing their operations. But rising production is driving more hedging activity as that market is becoming less liquid, which could mean higher hedging costs for some producers. “There’s a reason the shale and tight oil… Keep reading →
Scientists at Lehigh University are proposing modeling wind turbine blades on owls’ wings to mimic their stealth properties. “If the noise-reduction mechanism of the owl down can be established, there may be far-reaching implications to the design of novel sound-absorbing liners, the use of flexible roughness to affect trailing-edge noise and vibrations for aircraft and wind… Keep reading →
