California energy users have a shock in store between 2015 and 2020, warns a new analysis by ICF International.
That’s when California’s greenhouse gas law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, really bites. Popularly known as AB 32, the law requires progressive reductions in carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming, aiming to cut the state’s emissions to their 1990 level by 2020. Keep reading →
As utilities generate more electricity from natural gas, the potential is emerging for freak weather or other events to cause problems for both delivery systems and create a cascading regional disaster, industry officials and regulators concluded in a “stress test scenario” played out in Washington, DC this past Sunday.
Planning to avoid such events, in which problems in the gas system aggravate problems in the electric system and vice-versa, is complicated by the two energy systems’ significantly different regulatory structures, officials said. Keep reading →
The looming bottleneck for Canadian oil sands crude isn’t getting into the US, it’s getting out of the Midwest.
A panel of energy experts told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee January 31 in Washington, DC that Canadian oil producers won’t run out of pipeline capacity to ship additional crude across the US border until about 2019. Keep reading →
Exporting US natural gas could mean minimal price rises for consumers and a boost in jobs for the economy.
Or it could mean US prices soaring as volumes equaling a quarter of current consumption are shipped to foreign markets. Keep reading →
Widening of the Panama Canal, due to be completed in 2014, will allow most LNG tankers to transit the isthmus and make natural gas from Gulf of Mexico ports “instantly economic” to transport to high-price Asian markets.
That’s key for multiple proposals to build plants to liquefy and ship surplus US natural gas, according to experts at a Brookings Institution seminar Jan. 24. Most proposals are for existing but unused LNG import terminals on the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Giant LNG tankers, like the largest modern freighters, are too big for the existing Panama locks. Keep reading →
In his third state of the Union speech, President Obama kept energy as “pillar” of economic recovery and made natural gas the pivot point.
While endorsing an “all of the above” energy strategy, he added little new from the policies of the last three years, and no real surprises. Keep reading →
The US will “dramatically” reduce its oil import dependency between now and 2035, with imports declining from 49% today to 36%, Energy Information Administration Acting Administrator Howard Gruenspecht said Monday in Washington, DC.
In 2005-6, imports reached their record, 60% of US consumption. Keep reading →
The Environmental Protection Agency will work with generators, especially public power agencies, that have difficulty meeting new mercury reduction deadlines, but doubts many will need more time, says Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy.
Speaking to a breakfast hosted by ICF International in Washington Thursday, McCarthy defended EPA’s decision to stick with a three-year compliance deadline in its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule issued December 21. Keep reading →
President Obama upped the ante with Republicans Wednesday, saying their “rushed and arbitrary” 60-day deadline for finding whether TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline is in the public interest was too short, and telling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reject the project.
Obama specified his decision was not made on the merits of the 1,700-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada to a Nebraska terminal and then on to the Gulf of Mexico. The State Department said, “The Department’s denial of the permit application does not preclude any subsequent permit application or applications for similar projects.” Keep reading →
Chinese companies continue to “overpay wildly” for foreign energy investments but still can’t keep pace with growing consumption in China’s subsidized domestic market, Derek Scissors of the Heritage Foundation told the China Environment Forum in Washington last week.
Fuel prices are controlled and kept well below market in China, he said, so Chinese companies end up selling oil and gas into international markets whenever possible rather than sending the resources home. The government is promising reform but has set no schedule. Keep reading →
