https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/us-oil-rig-count-drops-by-five/
Sunday, July 22, 2018
US Oil Rig Count Drops By Five
U.S. energy companies this week cut oil rigs by the most since March as the rate of growth has slowed over the past month or so with recent declines in crude prices. U.S. crude prices are on track to fall for a third week in a row this week as escalating U.S.-China trade tensions threatened to hurt oil demand. Drillers cut five oil rigs in the week to July 20, bringing the total oil rig count down to 858, Baker Hughes, a GE company (NYSE: BHGE), said in its weekly report.
Natural Gas NOW Picks of the Week – July 21, 2018
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
…
…
Natural Gas NOW readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy. As usual, emphasis is added.
What Do Climate Change Lawsuits Have In Common? Trial Lawyers!
Others are starting to notice what we observed some time ago; that trail lawyers are deeply involved in both climate change and fractivist political campaigns, the most auspicious being Fractivist Rasputin Jay Halfon, but also including Matt Pawa and several others. Here’s more from the Daily Caller:
The city of Baltimore announced Friday it sued more than two dozen oil and gas companies for damages allegedly brought about by man-made global warming.
It’s the 13th such lawsuit to be filed by state and local governments trying to sue fossil fuel companies over global warming. Baltimore, like the others, is trying to apply public nuisance lawsuits to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But that’s not the only thing these suits have in common. Buried at the bottom of Baltimore’s press release on their new lawsuit is disclosure that the city will be “assisted by outside counsel from Sher Edling LLP.”
Sher Edling is one of several law firms behind the slew of climate lawsuits. Sher Edling is also working with six California cities and counties, as well as the state of Rhode Island, to sue fossil fuel companies over global warming…
However, Baltimore filed its lawsuit the day after a federal judge tossed out a similar climate lawsuit brought by New York City.
“Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government,” U.S. District Judge John Keenan wrote in his opinion.
Keenan’s ruling echoes a ruling by a Northern California federal judge in June that struck down nearly identical lawsuits brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland against oil companies.
The beauty of these lawsuits is this; they are revealing the special interests behind fractism; greedy trial lawyers being prominent among them.
HuffPo’s Distortions and Wrongheadedness
The Huffington Post, in a recent article, up on an old theme we’ve frequently exposed here as charlatanism; the false claim that oil and gas outspends everyone else on lobbying. Our buddy Steve Heins nicely demolishes the latest such claim in a LinkedIn piece:
It’s harder and harder to find a trustworthy voice or balanced reporting these days. Like “global warming” itself, it all depends on who is choosing the words, the “relevant facts” and who is doing the math.
The HuffPo piece, “Fossil Fuels Industries Outspend Clean Energy Advocates on Climate Lobbying by 10 to 1,” basically suffers from cherry picking and manipulating annual information to match the climate change cliches, especially because the official lobbying spending does not include “mobilizing outside groups, getting op-eds published in media outlets, or directing public relations campaigns that may shape legislation.”
The worst distortion is Big Fossil Fuel spends “$2 Billion on lobbying,” when actually they spend approximately $130 million per year ($2 Billion divided by 15 years). On the other hand, Clean Energy reports spending only $13 million on lobbying annually (pie chart unclear), while the environmental NGO’s likely spend at least $2 Billion a year including their unreported lobbying efforts because of their not-for-profit status.
Ultimately, the best of intentions and the bad outcomes of wrong-headedness are not strangers to each other.
Well said, Steve! More here.
Sen. Lisa Baker Informs Maya She’s Wrong (About Pretty Much Information)
Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Povertkeeper a/k/a Riverkeeper recently wrote Pennsylvania State Senators to say Senator Lisa Bake’s bill to make the DRBC pay for any mineral rights it takes from Wayne County landowners via a fracking ban is both dangerous and uninformed. Baker was having none of it and responded with a wonderful letter to Maya setting her straight on several points. Here’s the whole thing:
Dear Ms. Van Rossum:
Contrary to the contentions contained in your recent letter to state Senators, the provisions of Senate Bill 1189 are neither dangerous” nor “uninformed.” It is striking that these accusatory words are used without illustration or substantiation. This proposal is the result of extensive research and consultation, and in my opinion, consistent with recent decisions on questions of eminent domain and with the grants of power to various entities.
As you point out, the focus of Senate Bill 1189 is appropriate and just compensation for landowners. However, I am afraid the ‘lack of correct interpretation” in this matter is on the part of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
To be clear, this is not a debate about whether or not the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) can make decisions impacting land use, water resources and property. Nor is it being suggested that the DRBC lacks the ability to enact regulations according to its established rules and processes.
Sen. Lisa Baker
Nowhere does this legislation restrict the DRBC’s ability to implement a ban on high volume hydraulic fracturing, or to take any action it deems warranted, with respect to water quality and quantity. The bill simply states that a ban is a taking. and appropriate and just compensation must be paid.
It is only fair to make this determination in advance of any final decision. If we wait and allow the courts to decide, the determination of a taking will almost certainly be made later — after a ban is instituted and landowners are harmed. It is the legislature’s right and duty to let citizens and the DRBC know now what the effect of the ban will be.
When there is a clash between competing public interests, it is appropriate for all branches of government to become involved in resolving them. While I commend efforts here and elsewhere to give greater meaning to the environmental rights amendment, its impact cannot be taken in isolation from other rights conferred upon citizens.
If my legislation does not succeed in the current dispute, litigation will almost surely commence raising the same issues. That will have the certain effect of increasing costs and extending the period of uncertainty. Your organization has every right to assert its interests and express its views. That you do so constantly is highly commendable. But I cannot agree with your assumptions and conclusions about the power and wisdom of the DRBC.
Sincerely.
Lisa Baker
Senator
Thank you, Lisa, for, once again, speaking up for justice on behalf of your constituents.
The post Natural Gas NOW Picks of the Week – July 21, 2018 appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/natural-gas-now-picks-of-the-week-july-21-2018/
Saturday, July 21, 2018
FREE Audio: MDN Top 5 Stories for Week of July 16, 2018
Below is an audio recording (“podcast”) featuring the Top 5 stories most read over the past week on MDN. Just... Continue reading
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/free-audio-mdn-top-5-stories-for-week-of-july-16-2018/
Friday, July 20, 2018
Heinz Endowments Funds Radical Fractivist Attorneys
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
…
…
The Heinz Endowments is funding radical fractivist attorneys whose real goal is the destruction of capitalism and replacement of it with failed socialism.
During his wife’s campaign for political office, it was revealed that Jordan Yeager, the Delaware Riverkeeper’s radical attorney, was a member of the National Lawyers Guild. He subsequently, and for good reason, seems to scrubbed his biography of any mention of it. The Guild was, according to Congressional investigators, formed in 1937 as a Communist front group and it has identified itself with one radical cause after another, most recently with the short-lived #Occupy movement.
Today, Yeager likes to be seen as somewhat less radical for purposes of appearances in respectable places such as the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He represented Maya and company there in opposing the Wayne Land and Mineral Group’s righteous lawsuit against a politically corrupt DRBC. That doesn’t mean he’s any less radical, though. In fact, he serves on the board of an extremist association of attorneys funded by the Heinz Endowments to stir up as much environmental trouble as possible for those of us trying to actually do business and raise families in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
What I’m talking about is a group called Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services, another 501(c)(3) charity engaged in political warfare. This group:
This one uses young lawyers funded by four entities, three of them being well-known fractivist enabling outfits. These include Patagonia, the virtue signaling company and the Colcom Foundation, which has funded the community bankrupting CELDF. Then, there is the Heinz Endowments, which has also funded the CELDF, the phony Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, the Delaware Riverkeeper, StateImpactPA and just about every other fractivist group in the U.S., while its family board members invest in foreign oil and gas development.
Jordan Yeager, the radical attorney, it turns out, is a Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services board member. The organization describes itself this way:
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit law firm incubating the growth of sliding scale environmental legal services for modest means clients… empowering communities and stimulating economies in the Appalachian Basin region by providing environmental legal services and counseling to allow the underserved to make decisions about practical and innovative solutions to complex environmental challenges across the region.
By empowering, of course, Yeager and company mean to speak on behalf of those of modest means, substituting the Heinz agenda for theirs. This is the latest strategy of the fractivists; to package their own special intertests as advocacy on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. We see it in the opposition to a win-win SEPTA gas project in the Philly region, in Food & Water Watch fund-raising mailers, in Tom Wolf’s resurrection of the fraudulent environmental justice theory and numerous other fractivist activities.
It’s as if the poor were suddenly less interested in incomes than environmental virtue signaling and, of course, it’s utter nonsense. If there were any such thing as real environmental justice it would be focused on the way environmental groups are preventing growth and opportunity from reaching poor and moderate income communities such as those in Wayne County, where I reside. Instead, Yeager and company, are part of the effort to ensure those communities remain poor and dependent on government.
And, the company doing this includes young radicals just like Jordan Yeager. Take Andy Karas, for example, who is now working in Ohio. According to the group’s website (emphasis added):
Andy’s practice encompasses a wide range of environmental matters, with an emphasis on pollution control law and citizen suits. Additionally, his practice involves improving access to justice in the context of civil rights litigation and criminal defense, particularly arising out of instances of protest or direct action. He is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is affiliated with DSA’s Legal Working Group, as well as being actively involved with his local DSA chapter in Akron. He is additionally a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
It would be hard to get much more radical than that. Emily Collins, Fair Shake’s Executive Director and Managing Attorney, is a member the “Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board but Andy is the prototype young extremist in a business suit. His Facebook page is a revealing look into who he really is and it’s not flattering unless you’re impressed with self-flattery and immaturity.
The offices of Fair Shale Environmental Legal Services in the former Pittsburgh Wash House and Public Baths Building at 3495 Butler Street where, as the rear alley shot shows, the occupants are ket warm in the winter with natural gas heat; more Heinz hypocrisy.
So, we have the Heinz Endowments funding Jordan Yeager and company on multiple fronts, funding his echo chamber at StateImpactPA and funding his replication with a whole new slew of cloned radical attorneys. All of this is perfectly legal, of course, except that it shouldn’t enjoy tax-exemption, especially when the evident purpose of such so much of this is to support the Heinz family’s own investments in competing foreign oil and gas by trashing the U.S. version. It’s time this fractivist racket was shut down at the source of the funding. The Heinz Endowments itself is radical political enterprise.
The post Heinz Endowments Funds Radical Fractivist Attorneys appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/heinz-endowments-funds-radical-fractivist-attorneys/
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Oil Trader Vitol teams with Peabody to grind coal for refineries
The world’s biggest independent oil trader and the largest non-government-owned coal mining giant on Earth are joining forces to develop a new use for coal.
Vitol Group and Peabody Energy have teamed with a U.K. startup that’s developed a process to pulverize coal, remove impurities and pollutants, and blend it with crude oil or fuels for use by refineries and other customers, Bloomberg reported.
While unproven on an industrial scale, the technique has the potential to revive an industry that has stumbled as the world shuns coal for cleaner natural gas and renewables.
“The coal industry needs this because we are able to upgrade their material into higher-value, lower-emission products,” Julian McIntyre, founder and CEO of startup Arq Ltd., said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The oil industry needs this as the energy industry becomes more diversified and competitive with renewables.”
Arq is building a plant in Corbin, Kentucky, to process coal from a nearby Peabody mine, and Vitol has agreed to blend and market the resulting output, Kallanish Energy reports. Production costs less than $10 an oil-equivalent barrel, according to London-based Arq.
Methods of transforming coal into oil liquids or other hydrocarbons have been tried for roughly a century, with varying degrees of success.
Under deals announced Wednesday, Vitol and Peabody will each invest $10 million in Arq, with the potential to inject more cash over the next three years.
The partnership could allow Peabody to add value to its coal, reduce its environmental footprint and expand the market for its products, Charles Meintjes, executive vice president and chief commercial officer for the St. Louis, Missouri-based company, said, in a statement.
The venture may also allow refiners and fuel customers to diversify sources of supply, Mike Muller, the former head of crude trading at Royal Dutch Shell, who recently joined Vitol, said in a separate statement.
Arq looks to complete its Kentucky plant by early 2019, and produce the equivalent of roughly 2,000 barrels a day once it’s running at full capacity. The company then plans to build larger plants near coal mines in the U.S. and Australia, and targets 100,000 barrels a day within two years, McIntyre told Bloomberg.
Let FERC Know Timely Decisions Are Needed for Pipelines
Natural Gas NOW
“PAShaleAdvocate”
Let FERC know you are in favor of revising their natural gas infrastructure review procedures to be more transparent, understandable and timely.
Natural gas has rapidly become the Untied State’s fuel of choice. It is really no surprise as it has become so abundant and affordable. Natural gas has taken over where coal left off for power-generation as it is more economical and cleaner for the environment.
Natural gas pipeline development is imperative for delivering this reliable energy to families and businesses. The approval process for interstate natural gas pipelines has been a tedious and long process through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which has been operating under the same old regulation process for decades.
FERC has seen the changes in the energy market has realized it may be time to seek stakeholder perspectives on if/how to revise their permitting process for natural gas infrastructure projects. Our friends over at Williams have assembled an online action center and guide so you can easily show your support and submit your comments to FERC.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking stakeholder input to help the Commission decide whether it should revise its approach to permitting natural gas infrastructure projects. During the public comment period, FERC is considering input about its approach, evaluation and methodology for reviewing the projects that make access to reliable, domestic and affordable energy possible.
Knowing of your support for the energy industry, I am reaching out to ask that you TAKE ACTION to assist FERC in its decision-making process. We have created a process on our Action Center that makes it very easy for you to support the energy projects that promote economic growth, American jobs and a healthier environment. Please take a minute to click the button below and add your name to a petition that will be sent to the FERC.
Please share this with your co-workers, family and friends who have a similar interest in keeping the natural gas industry strong and moving forward. If you would like to create a more unique comment or craft an email to your staff, membership or network promoting this action, please contact me. Our outreach team will be happy to assist you.
You can download the FERC Notice of Inquiry guide here.
As always, thank you for your continued engagement to help make a difference in growing our natural gas network.
The post Let FERC Know Timely Decisions Are Needed for Pipelines appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/let-ferc-know-timely-decisions-are-needed-for-pipelines/
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Canada’s oil sands to see modest growth from 2020-2027
Canada’s oil sands will experience large production growth through 2019 followed by more modest, steady growth through 2027, according to a new, 10-year production forecast by business information provider IHS Markit.
The forecast calls for production to rise more than 500,000 barrels per day in 2019, and up to 1 million barrels per day (MMBPD) by 2027 compared to 2018, Kallanish Energy reports.
Canadian oil sands have gained importance to the heavy oil market as the only source of material supply growth in the world for that type of crude.
Output from other large producers of heavy oil — most notably Venezuela, where production has fallen by more than one MMBPD in recent years and is expected to fall further — has declined.
Despite this increased prominence in heavy oil markets and higher oil prices in recent months, the new outlook still expects production growth to moderate after 2019, similar to previous IHS Markit projections for oil sands production.
The strong growth in the near term is expected to come from the completion of projects sanctioned prior to the oil price collapse, the revival of some deferred projects as well as some new investments in capital efficiency projects.
Following 2019, uncertainties related to much-needed infrastructure—particularly pipeline takeaway capacity—point to a deceleration of growth, IHS Markit says.
“Pipeline constraints have exacerbated price discounts for Western Canadian heavy oil relative to global benchmarks. Over the past 12 months alone, the difference in price compared to a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has fluctuated just under $10 per barrel to more than $30,” said Kevin Birn, executive director, IHS Markit.
“This sort of price volatility is weighing on investment decisions in western Canada and will likely continue to do so until greater certainty can be achieved.”
The IHS Markit outlook does continue to project growth in part due to the unique nature of oil sands projects, which do not experience production declines, meaning any incremental investment can add to existing production and contribute to growth.
“This represents a strategic advantage for oil sands asset owners coming out of a low-price period in that there is no production deficit to overcome,” according to IHS Markit. “IHS Markit also expects greater crude-by-rail movements to help pick up the slack in the interim and for new pipelines to be built eventually.
“Over the long term, the timing of the new pipelines will be key,” Birn said. “Even when greater certainty on infrastructure is achieved, it will take time for the impact of subsequent investment decisions to play out on production growth because of the lead time involved in oil sands development. The current growth trajectory was a long time in the making, it has taken a time to slow, and it will take time to recover.”
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/canadas-oil-sands-to-see-modest-growth-from-2020-2027/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)