Oil, Gas, And Fracking News Reads 28May 2018 - Part 1

Here are some selected new articles from the week ended 27 May 2018.

This will be a feature at Global Economic Intersection every Monday evening.

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oil prices fell for the first time in four weeks this week, giving up all of their May gains in the process, but not before hitting new three and a half year highs on Monday and again on Tuesday….after rising 58 cents to $71.28 a barrel last week, mostly on geopolitical fears, oil contracts for June delivery of US oilrose 96 cents to $72.24 a barrel on Monday, the highest since November 2014, on fears that Venezuela’s oil output would fall further after Trump added new financial sanctions to punish the country for re-electing their socialist president Maduro…oil prices then rose to another 42 month high of 72.83 a barrel on U.S. sanctions threats against Iran on Tuesday morning, but then fell back on renewed fears of a trade war between the US and China to close 11 cents lower, as trading in June US oil expired Tuesday afternoon at $72.13 a barrel, even as Brent crude for July, the global benchmark, still settled 35 cents higher, at another 3 1/2 -year closing high of $79.57 a barrel…with the contract for July US oil, which had fallen 15 cents to 72.20 on Tuesday, becoming the quoted front month oil price Wednesday, oil prices fell 36 cents to $71.84 a barrel on Wednesday, after the weekly EIA report showed a shockingly large increase in US oil stockpiles…oil prices then sank $1.13 to $70.71 a barrel on Thursday, on expectations that OPEC, meeting with Russia in St Petersburg, would increase oil output to cover the supply shortfalls expected out of Venezuela and Iran…US crude prices then fell as much as $3 in a broad selloff on Friday, after Saudi energy minister Al-Falih said OPEC and Russia were prepared to adjust oil policy in June, possibly by adding as much as 1 million barrels per day to global supplies, with oil closing the day $2.83 lower at $67.88 a barrel…thus the benchmark July US oil contract, which had ended last week at $71.37 a barrel, ended this week 4.9% lower, in its largest weekly retreat since early February…

since that end of the week oil price crash quickly reversed this month’s worth of price increases, we’ll include a quick graph of that interesting price trajectory here…

the above graph is an early Saturday morning screenshot of the live interactive US oil price graph at Daily FX, an online platform that provides trading news, charts, indicators and analysis of the markets, which we had set to show oil price changes every 2 hours…thus, each bar on this graph represents oil prices for 2 hours of oil trading between 8 AM on May 1st and the end of trading on Friday of this week, with green bars representing the two hour periods when the price of oil went up, and red bars representing the periods when the price of oil went down…for green bars, the starting oil price at the beginning of the 120 minute period is at the bottom of the bar and the price at the end of the period is at the top of the bar, while for red or down periods, the starting price is at the top of the bar and the price at the end of the 2 hours is at the bottom of the bar…also barely visible on this “candlestick” style graph are the faint grey “wicks” above and below each bar, to indicate trading prices during each 2 hour period that were above or below the opening to closing price range for that 2 hour period…

as you can see, oil prices moved up fairly steadily throughout most of May, driven mostly by Trump’s Iran sanctions, repeatedly hitting new 42 month highs on the way, till they reversed in the noon hour on Tuesday, which you can see as an obvious green to red peak…prices then fell in a steeping trajectory until the close, after which they still continued sliding in after hours trading…note that the odd price cite on the right margin was the morning price on May 1st, produced by the interactive function as i navigated the cursor to 8 AM on the graph…that $68.15 thus represents the price at that time, thus showing that oil prices are now down roughly 1% for the month…

natural gas prices, on the other hand, were 3.2% higher this week, hitting 17 week highs on three consecutive days before slipping a tenth of a cent to $2.939 per mmBTU on Friday, as the temperature outlook progressively indicated a warmer than normal period ahead for most of the country, which would increase power burn for air conditioning, leaving less natural gas left over for storage…the natural gas storage report from the EIA for the week ending May 18th indicated that natural gas in storage in the US rose by 91 billion cubic feet to 1,629 billion cubic feet over the week, which still left our gas supplies 804 billion cubic feet, or 33.0% below the 2,433 billion cubic feet that were in storage on May 19th of last year, and 499 billion cubic feet, or 23.4% below the five-year average of 2,128 billion cubic feet of natural gas that are typically in storage on the third weekend in May…analysts had forecast a 92 billion cubic foot addition to storage, so while this 91 billion cubic foot addition was in line with expectations, it was still above the 74 billion cubic feet of gas that were added to storage over the week ending May 19th last year, and a bit above the average 89 billion cubic foot surplus of natural gas typically added to storage during the third week in May…however, except for the polar vortex year of 2014, natural gas supplies are still at their lowest on record for this time of year, and at 1,629 billion cubic feet they would need to increase by more than 98 billion cubic feet per week to get supplies up to the pre-winter average of 3,800 billion cubic feet by mid-October, a target that will get increasingly difficult as we move into the warmer part of the year, when demand for air conditioning is strongest…

The Latest US Oil Data from the EIA

this week’s US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration, covering the week ending May 18th, indicated that due to a big jump in our oil imports and and an even larger drop in our oil exports, we had surplus oil to add to our commercial crude supplies for the tenth time in the past seventeen weeks…our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 558,000 barrels per day to an average of 8,159,000 barrels per day during the week, after rising by 258,000 barrels per day over the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 818,000 barrels per day from last week’s record high to 1,748,000 barrels per day during this week, which meant that our effective trade in oil over the week ending the 18th worked out to a net import average of 6,411,000 barrels of per day during the week, 1,376,000 barrels per day more than the net of our imports minus exports during the prior week…at the same time, field production of crude oil from US wells inched up by 2,000 barrels per day to a record high of 10,725,000 barrels per day, which means that our daily supply of oil from our net imports and from wells totaled an average of 17,136,000 barrels per day during the reporting week…

meanwhile, US oil refineries were using 16,628,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending May 18th, 7,000 barrels per day less than they used during the prior week, while at the same time 725,000 barrels of oil per day were reportedly being added to oil storage in the US….consequently, this week’s crude oil figures from the EIA seem to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 217,000 fewer barrels per day than what was added to storage and what refineries reported they used during the week…to account for that disparity, the EIA needed to insert a (+217,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the data for the supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a fudge factor that is labeled in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”… (for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that “unaccounted for” oil, see this EIA explainer)…

further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) show that the 4 week average of our oil imports slipped to an average of 7,908,000 barrels per day, which was 3.5% less than the 8,192,000 barrel per day average we imported over the same four-week period last year…the 725,000 barrel per day increase in our total crude inventories included a 825,000 barrel per day addition to our commercially available stocks of crude oil, which was partially offset by a 100,000 barrel per day decrease of the oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, likely part of a sale of government owned oil mandated by this year’s federal budget…this week’s 2,000 barrel per day increase in our crude oil production included a 24,000 barrel per day increase in output from wells in the lower 48 states, which was mostly offser by a 22,000 barrel per day decrease in oil output from Alaska…the 10,725,000 barrels of crude per day that were produced by US wells during the week ending May 18th were nonetheless again the highest on record, 15.1% more than the 9,320,000 barrels per day that US wells were producing during the week ending May 19th of last year, and up by 27.2% from the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production fell to during the last week of June, 2016…

US oil refineries were operating at 91.8% of their capacity in using 16,628,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending May 18th, up from 91.1% of capacity the prior week, but down from the seasonal high of 93.5% of capacity during the first week of April….the 16,628,000 barrels of oil that were refined this week were down 5.6% from the off-season record of 17,608,000 barrels per day that were being refined during the last week of December 2017, and 3.8% less than the 17,281,000 barrels of crude per day that were being processed during the week ending May 19th, 2017, when refineries were operating at 93.5% of capacity….

even though the amount of oil that was refined this week was little changed, gasoline output from our refineries was much lower, decreasing by 410,000 barrels per day to 10,052,000 barrels per day during the week ending May 18th, after our refineries’ gasoline output had increased by 488,000 barrels per day during the week ending May 11th....with this week’s decrease, our gasoline production was 1.9% lower during the week than the 10,243,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily during the week ending May 19th of last year….at the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) fell by 93,000 barrels per day to 4,938,000 barrels per day, after rising by 38,000 barrels per day the prior week….that left the week’s distillates production 5.0% lower than the 5,197,000 barrels of distillates per day than were being produced during the week ending May 19th, 2017….

however, even with the big drop in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week rose by 1,883,000 barrels to 233,897,000 barrels by May 18th, just the fourth increase in 12 weeks, but the 19th increase in 28 weeks, as gasoline inventories, as usual, were being built up over the winter months…our gasoline supplies rose this week because our exports of gasoline fell by 569,000 barrels per day to 356,000 barrels per day, and because our imports of gasoline rose by 342,000 barrels per day to 1,063,000 barrels per day, even as our domestic consumption of gasoline rose by 158,000 barrels per day to 9,689,000 barrels per day…but even after this week’s increase, our gasoline inventories finished the week 2.5% lower than last May 19th’s level of 239,882,000 barrels, even as they were still roughly 6.8% above the 10 year average of gasoline supplies for this time of the year…

meanwhile, with this week’s decrease in distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels fell by 951,000 barrels to a four year low of 113,995,000 barrels during the week ending May 18th, the 10th decrease in eleven weeks, and after falling by 13,311,000 barrels over the prior five weeks, at a time of year when distillates supplies are typically increasing…our distillate inventories fell again because our exports of distillates rose by 562,000 barrels per day to 1,461,000 barrels per day, and because our imports of distillates fell by 53,000 barrels per day to record low 24,000 barrels per day, even while the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, a proxy for our domestic consumption, fell by 585,000 barrels per day to 3,637,000 barrels per day…after this week’s inventory decrease, our distillate supplies ended the week 22.1% below the 146,339,000 barrels that we had stored on May 19th, 2017, and roughly 15.6% lower than the 10 year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year…

with our supplies of distillates now at a 4 year low, we’ll take a look at a graph of what that looks like, compared to recent history:

in the graph above, copied from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf), the blue line shows the recent track of US distillate inventories in millions of barrels over the period from January 2017 to May 18th, 2018, while the grey shaded area represents the range of distillate inventories in millions of barrels as reported weekly by the EIA over the 5 years prior to the time of year shown by the blue line…thus, on the extreme left of the graph, the grey shaded area shows shows the 5 year range of distillate inventories back to January 2012, while on the right side of the graph, the grey shaded area shows shows the 5 year range of distillate inventories back to December 2013…as we can see by the blue line, as recently as February 2017 our distillate supplies were at an all time high, but in the 15 months since then, they’ve fallen to a 4 year low, largely because we’ve been exporting diesel fuel at a record pace…only at the end of the polar vortex winter of 2014 were our distillate fuel supplies lower than they are now, due at that time to the exceptionally large use of heat oil over that winter…in fact, the last time distillate supplies were this low after the third week of May was back in 2008, because they’d already recovered to 116,277,000 barrels by May 16, 2014….unlike natural gas, however, where we are largely dependent on storage for our winter supplies, any distillate shortfall during a cold winter could be quickly made up by increasing our distillates imports, albeit more than likely at a much higher price than we are now selling our exports for…

finally, with the big drop in our oil exports accompanied by a big increase in our oil imports, our commercial supplies of crude oil increased for the 11th time in 2018, but just for the 18th time in the past year, as our commercial crude supplies rose by 5,778,000 barrels during the week, from 432,354,000 barrels on May 11th to 438,132,000 barrels on May 18th…however, after falling most of the past year, our oil inventories as of May 18th were still 15.1% below the 516,340,000 barrels of oil we had stored on May 19th of 2017, 13.3% lower than the 505,571,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on May 20th of 2016, and 1.9% below the 446,412,000 barrels of oil we had in storage on May 22nd of 2015, during a period when the US glut of oil had already begun to build from the nearly stable supply levels of the prior years…

OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report

next, we’re going to take a look at OPEC’s May Oil Market Report (covering April OPEC & global oil data) this week, as i didn’t have time to get to it last week.. it’s available as a free download and hence it’s the report we check for monthly global oil supply and demand data, rather than the paywalled report of the IEA that’s usually reported in the media…the first table from this monthly report that we’ll look at is from the page numbered 51 of that report (pdf page 59), and it shows oil production in thousands of barrels per day for each of the current OPEC members over the recent years, quarters and months, as the column headings indicate…for all their official production measurements, OPEC uses an average of estimates from six “secondary sources”, namely the International Energy Agency (IEA), the oil-pricing agencies Platts and Argus, ‎the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the oil consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) and the industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, as an impartial adjudicator as to whether their output quotas and production cuts are being met, to thus resolve any potential disputes that could arise if each member reported their own figures…

as we can see on this table of official oil production data, OPEC’s oil output increased by 12,100 barrels per day in April to 31,930,000 barrels per day, from their March production total of 31,918,000 barrels per day, but that was a figure that was originally reported as 31,958,000 barrels per day, so their production for April was actually 27,900 barrels per day lower than the previously reported March figures (for your reference, here is the table of the official March OPEC output figures as reported a month ago, before this month’s revisions)…as you can tell from the far right column above, an increase of 46,500 barrels per day in the output from Saudi Arabia was the main reason that the cartel’s output rose, with Algeria also contributing a 17,700 barrel per day increase…however, with a quota of 10,060,000 barrels per day for the Saudis, and 1,040,000 barrels per day for the Algerians, both of those countries still remain well below their allocations, according to their original pact…at 31,930,000 barrels per day, OPEC oil output is now 800,000 barrels per day below the 32,730,000 barrels per day revised quota they agreed to at their November 2017 meeting, with only Iraq’s 4,429,000 barrel per day output above their 4,350,000 barrel per day allocation…

the next graphic we’ll include shows us both OPEC and world oil production monthly on the same graph, over the period from May 2016 to April 2018, and it comes from the page numbered 57 (pdf page 65) of the April OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report…on this graph, the cerulean blue bars represent OPEC oil production in millions of barrels per day as shown on the left scale, while the purple graph represents global oil production in millions of barrels per day, with the metrics for global output shown on the right scale…

OPEC’s preliminary data indicates that total global oil production rose by a rounded 120,000 barrels per day to a record 97.89 million barrels per day in April, after March’s global output total was revised down by .36 million barrels per day from the record 98.15 million barrels per day global oil output that was reported a month ago, as non-OPEC oil production rose by 110,000 barrels per day…global oil output for April was also 2.08 million barrels per day, or 2.2% higher than the 95.81 million barrels of oil per day that were being produced globally in April a year ago (see the May 2017 OPEC report online (pdf) for the year ago data)… OPEC’s March oil production of 31,930,000 barrels per day thus represented just 32.6% of what was produced globally, the same percentage as in March, as oil output increases by US, the UK, Brazil, and China were only partially offset by decreases in oil output from Canada, Ghana and Kazakhstan…OPEC’s April 2017 production was at 31,732,000 barrels per day, which means that the 13 OPEC members who were part of OPEC last year, excluding their new member Equatorial Guinea, are now producing 71,000 more barrels per day of oil than they were producing a year ago, during the fourth month that their production quotas were in effect, with the increase in OPEC output from last year largely due to recoveries of oil production in Libya and Nigeria…

however, even with the increase in global oil output that we can see in the above purple graph, April saw the first deficit in the amount of oil being produced globally so far this year, largely due to increasing demand, as this next table from the OPEC report will show us..

the table above comes from page 32 of the May OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (pdf page 40), and it shows regional and total oil demand in millions of barrels per day for 2017 in the first column, and OPEC’s estimate of oil demand by region and globally quarterly over 2018 over the rest of the table…on the “Total world” line of the third column, we’ve circled in blue the figure that’s relevant for April, which is their revised estimate of global oil demand during the second quarter of 2018…

thus, OPEC’s estimate is that during the 2nd quarter of this year, all oil consuming regions of the globe will be using 98.08 million barrels of oil per day, which is an upward revision from their prior estimate of 97.84 million barrels of oil per day….at the same time, as OPEC showed us in the oil supply section of this report and the summary supply graph above, after the OPEC and non-OPEC production cuts, the world’s oil producers were only producing 97.89 million barrels per day during April, which means that there was a shortfall of around 190,000 barrels per day in global oil production vis-a vis estimated demand during the month…

meanwhile, as you see circled in green above, global oil demand figures for 2017 and for the first quarter of 2018 were also revised higher, which means that our previously computed oil surplus for the first quarter of 2018 and our oil shortfall figures for 2017 will also have to be revised… to start with, we had figured there was a surplus of around 750,000 barrels per day in global oil production vis-a vis demand during March; OPEC’s revised figures show that demand was actually 150,000 barrels per day higher during the 1st quarter than they estimated last month, whereas we saw earlier, March global supply figures were revised 360,000 barrels per day lower…those revisions thus mean that the global oil surplus in March was just 240,000 barrels per day…meanwhile, the 0.15 million barrel of oil per day upward revision to 1st quarter demand means that the surpluses we had computed for January and February were that much lower; based on our figures from a month ago, that means that January’s surplus would be revised down to 260,000 barrels per day, and February’s surplus would be revised down to 420,000 barrels per day…hence, for the first three months of 2018, global oil production exceeded demand by roughly 20.6 million barrels…

on the other hand, cumulative global oil demand figures for 2017 were revised higher by 0.13 million barrels per day to 97.13 barrels per day (also circled in green) with this report, with revisions for each quarter of that year shown in the table on page 31 of the May OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (pdf page 39)…while we’re not about to recompute the surplus or deficit totals for each month of 2017, we can estimate that the total deficit for the year was roughly 47.5 million barrels than had previously been reported (0.13 bpd * 365 days)…that means our previously computed shortfall of 213 million barrels for 2017 oil supply would now be revised to show a global shortfall of 260.5 million barrels for the year, which, according to OPEC, had nearly eliminated the global glut of crude seen before their output cuts began…

This Week’s Rig Count

US drilling activity increased for the 13th time in the past fourteen weeks and for 22nd time in the past 29 weeks during the week ending May 25th, a period of higher oil prices that has consequentially seen the rig increases far exceed the few decreases…Baker Hughes reported that the total count of active rotary rigs running in the US increased by 13 rigs to 1059 rigs over the week ending on Friday, which was also 151 more rigs than the 908 rigs that were in use as of the May 26th report of 2017, while it was still down from the recent high of 1929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, the week before OPEC officially began their attempt to flood the global oil market…

the number of rigs drilling for oil was up by 15 rigs to 859 rigs this week, which was also 137 more oil rigs than were running a year ago, while it was still well below the recent high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10, 2014…at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations fell by 2 rigs to 198 rigs this week, which was only 13 more gas rigs than the 185 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, and way down from the modern high of 1,606 natural gas rigs that were deployed on August 29th, 2008…in addition, there are also two rigs running now that are listed as “miscellaneous”, compared to the 1 “miscellaneous” rig that was operating a year ago….

drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico was unchanged at 18 rigs this week, which was 5 fewer rigs than were drilling in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago…with a rig also drilling offshore from Alaska, the total US offshore count of 19 rigs was down by 4 from last year’s offshore total of 23 rigs….meanwhile the count of active horizontal drilling rigs increased by 7 rigs to 926 horizontal rigs this week, which was 160 more horizontal rigs than the 766 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on May 26th of last year, but down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014…at the same time, the vertical rig count increased by 5 rigs to 66 vertical rigs this week, which was still down from the 77 vertical rigs that were in use during the same week of last year…in addition,, the directional rig count was up by 1 rig to 67 directional rigs this week, which was also up by 2 rigs from the 65 directional rigs that were deployed on May 26th of 2017…

the details on this week’s changes in drilling activity by state and by shale basin are included in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that shows those changes…the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major producing states, and the second table shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins…in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of May 25th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (May 18th) and this week’s (May 25th) count, the third column shows last week’s May 18th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and those of the equivalent weekend report of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was on Friday the 26th of May, 2017…

as we’ve seen many times this year, the lion’s share of this week’s drilling increase took place in the Permian, where 12 rigs were added through 4 Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Districts in western Texas, while one Permian rig on the New Mexico side of the border was shut down…with the rig count up by one in both the Eagle Ford of south Texas and in the Barnett shale in the Dallas – Ft Worth area, that means 5 rigs outside of the major Texas basins, mostly in northeast Texas, were concurrently shut down in the state, to end with a net gain of 9 rigs for Texas for the week…meanwhile, natural gas rigs were down by 2 nationally despite the addition of one natural gas rig in the West Virginia Marcellus and the switch of an oil rig to natural gas in the Granite Wash tight sand of the Texas – Oklahoma panhandle area because a natural gas rig was shut down in the Eagle Ford while 2 oil rigs were added, and because 3 natural gas rigs in “other basins” not tracked separately by Baker Hughes were shut down at the same time…we should also note that other than the rig changes in the major producing states shown above, Mississippi also saw a rig shut down this week, leaving two rigs operating in the state, still up from one rig deployed in Mississippi the same week a year ago….

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FirstEnergy must guarantee nuclear clean up, environmental groups tell feds – Plain-Dealer – FirstEnergy’s power plant subsidiaries have not put enough money into federally mandated decommissioning trust funds to pay for the shutdown and cleanup of each of its four nuclear reactors, charges an environmental group with a reputation as a legally effective environmental advocate. The Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center, or ELPC, made that charge in a petition filed in March with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The ELPC’s intervention in the Peabody Energy bankruptcy led to the court requiring that company to purchase $1.2 billion in surety bonds to guarantee clean up. The ELPC wants the NRC to hold parent company FirstEnergy Corp. responsible for bankrolling what it argues could well be a multi-billion reactor cleanup shortfall, which taxpayers or customers could be forced to pay. The ELPC petitioned the NRC just days before the FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on March 31 and the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. told the NRC it would close its nuclear plants within two years. Now the ELPC, joined by the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, the Ohio Environmental Council and Ohio Citizen Action, have intervened in the bankruptcy case under way in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The groups want Judge Alan Koshik to “lift” the normal “stay” on legal action that companies seeking bankruptcy protection are normally afforded. “[We] are not seeking a money judgment, but, instead, are seeking leave to continue pursuing the legal and administrative remedies afforded them under federal and state laws and their constitutional right to petition their government,” the environmental groups argued in their 96-page petition filed with the bankruptcy court. In other words, they want the judge to allow their action at the NRC to continue unimpeded by a decision in the bankruptcy case preventing it.

An Ohio legislator defied FirstEnergy lobbyists. Then a ‘dark money’ group helped sink her bid for Congress (Center for Public Integrity) A “dark money” organization tied to a major electric company pumped significant cash into an Ohio congressional race in what a losing candidate describes as an act of retribution over a failed financial deal.Christina Hagan, a state representative who was running in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 16th congressional district seat, said a group called the Conservative Leadership Alliance targeted her with a barrage of attack ads after she declined to support legislation Akron, Ohio-based electric company FirstEnergy had lobbied her to help pass.The Conservative Leadership Alliance’s treasurer is Marc Himmelstein, who has worked for years as a FirstEnergy lobbyist in Washington, D.C. FirstEnergy has paid Himmelstein’s firm, National Environmental Strategies, $640,000 since 2010, according to congressional lobbying filings.Hagan said she didn’t think the bill, which would have allowed FirstEnergy to collect an additional $300 million annually from customers to shore up its aging power plants, was fair to electric customers. House Bill 178 would have created “zero-emission credits” that would have raised customers’ monthly bills by about 5 percent. “I didn’t budge when they came into my office to lobby me,” Hagan said of her meetings with FirstEnergy officials, which took place over a period of many months. “I became the target of the company and the members of our leadership team who wanted to get it done but couldn’t because I wasn’t going to be supportive. I’m sure they just wanted to make an example of me in my race for higher office that if you don’t play well, this is what will happen to you.”

ODNR Issues a Single Permit in Ohio’s Utica – The Ohio Department of Natural Resources last week issued just a single permit in eastern Ohio’s Utica shale and reported 20 rigs in operation.XTO Energy, a division of Exxon Mobil, received a permit for a new horizontal well in Belmont County, according to ODNR.As of May 19, ODNR has issued 2,830 permits for horizontal wells in the Utica, of which 2,343 are drilled and 1,898 are in production.There were no new permits issued for wells in Mahoning, Trumbull or Columbiana counties. Nor were there new permits issued in neighboring Lawrence and Mercer counties in western Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.Earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that the Appalachian region – which includes both Ohio’s Utica and Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania – is boosting oil and gas production each month.Net month, the Utica and Marcellus project production of 114,000 barrels of oil per day and natural gas production of 28.1 billion cubic feet per day. Net production of oil is projected to increase by 4,000 barrels a day in June, while net production of natural gas is anticipated to increase by 373 million cubic feet per day.

Utica Shale well activity as of May 19 –

DRILLED: 289 (292 as of last week)
DRILLING: 161 (164)
PERMITTED: 482 (484)
PRODUCING: 1,898 (1,890)
TOTAL: 2,830 (2,830)

TOP 10 COMPANIES BY NUMBER OF PERMITS

1. CHESAPEAKE: 875 (875 as of last week)
2. GULFPORT: 403 (403)
3. ASCENT RESOURCES UTICA: 351 (351)
4. ANTERO: 261 (261)
5. ECLIPSE: 180 (180)
6. RICE: 129 (129)
7. HESS: 89 (89)
8. CNX GAS: 84 (84)
9. XTO: 67 (67)
10. HILCORP: 55 (55)

Prudential Financial Inc. Acquires 576,699 Shares of Gulfport Energy — Prudential Financial Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Gulfport Energy Co. by 40.5% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 2,000,364 shares of the oil and gas producer’s stock after buying an additional 576,699 shares during the period. Prudential Financial Inc. owned approximately 1.09% of Gulfport Energy worth $19,303,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. State of Alaska Department of Revenue acquired a new stake in shares of Gulfport Energy during the fourth quarter worth about $137,000. Oakbrook Investments LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Gulfport Energy during the fourth quarter worth about $180,000. Delpha Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Gulfport Energy during the fourth quarter worth about $187,000. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of Gulfport Energy by 8,800.0% during the fourth quarter. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC now owns 17,800 shares of the oil and gas producer’s stock worth $227,000 after buying an additional 17,600 shares during the period. Finally, MANA Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Gulfport Energy during the fourth quarter worth about $268,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 92.27% of the company’s stock.

Community caretakers block access to Cabot Oil fracking site – In a symbolic gesture, proactive residents of Ashland, Holmes and Richland County temporarily blocked access to an exploratory well pad under construction in Green Township, Ashland County, Ohio. The horizontal drilling being conducted by Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation is extremely unwanted and unwelcome. The vast majority of folks who live here, about 98 percent according to door-to-door polling, are against this type of extractive industrialization in this north central Ohio country community known for beautiful scenery, rural farming and the millions of visitors who have come to enjoy outdoor recreation in the area’s two state parks, Malabar farm and Mohican.Last December several grass roots groups formed to educate the public about the change in conditions that will come from drilling activity of this type- increased truck traffic, water withdrawal from local water sources, deforestation and drilling activity 24 hours a day for weeks on end.Local legislators hands are tied in the effort to protect citizens, bound by state and federal law which has been drafted by pro-industry organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), bought by lobbying money and voted into law in favor of oil and gas drilling operations. In fact, not one single landowner in the area of this horizontal well had any say in the matter of industrializing their community. The sub-surface mineral rights were held by Ohio Fuel Gas Company, a now defunct business that preceded Columbia Gas and Cabot was able to obtain a permit with just 136 acres claimed for drilling, according to the permit on file at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). Columbia Gas Transmission LLC owns the majority of sub-surface rights to around 4,000 feet due to the fact that this entire three county area sits above a massive gas storage field used to store excess resources during the summer and withdraw them during peak need times.All of this is changing with the exportation of American resources out of country. TransCanada acquired Columbia in 2016 and is in the process of replacing the 16-inch pipeline around the drilling site, so in addition to the massive drilling pad being built on this rural road, wooded residential lots are being clear cut for the pipeline right of way in preparation for major excavation activities to begin soon.

Gearing Up For Fracking Fight, Ohio Residents Turn To Pennsylvania For Advice – WOSU — After 40 years, Kerri and Jeff Bond are moving from their small farm in Seneca Lake, Ohio. The trees in their yard started to lose foliage and die last year. Their sheep, chickens and cats died, and their dogs developed tumors. The Bonds, themselves, say their family has developed ongoing rashes. “We’ve never had any of this before, ever,” Kerri Bond says. “And we’ve lived area our whole lives. We wanted to retire here. We can’t. We’ve got to move.” The Bonds blame the gas development that’s been building up all around them – numerous well pads, and the Crum Compressor Station sits about a quarter mile over the ridge from their farm. The nighttime sky lights up orange as the compressor station is vented. Then there’s all the diesel trucks creating traffic problems and emitting pollution. Bond was one of about 40 people who gathered recently at Salt Fork State Park in eastern Ohio for a meeting organized and funded by the Freshwater Accountability Project. It was an opportunity for residents to voice their concerns, and to hear from experts about the environmental, legal, and health issues of fracking. Environmental activist Teresa Mills says people like Bond aren’t getting assistance from Ohio officials.“The industry has everything locked down,” she says. “So people feel helpless.”This feeling of helplessness is why Mills helped organize this community meeting.“What we were hoping to do is to get everyone together, and show that together we can stand strong, and we can move forward,” she says. Pennsylvanians have dealt with these issues, too. John Stolz, an environmental microbiologist at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, has researched the environmental impacts of fracking for years. He says Pennsylvania regulators didn’t seem to take citizen complaints seriously. “The reality is you’ve got 9,000 people calling the [Pennsylvania] DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] over the past ten years to complain,” he says. “It got to the point where I finally came out and said, ‘We’re not dealing with crazy people.'”

Work on NEXUS pipeline in south Oberlin begins – – Construction has started this week on the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline in south Oberlin.“Specialized teams with years of extensive experience monitor the building process from start to finish to ensure there is minimal disturbance to landowners and the environment during pipeline construction and restoration,” said NEXUS spokesman Adam Parker in an email.The 255.8-mile pipeline was given the all-clear after months of litigation by homeowners and communities in its path from Columbiana County in eastern Ohio passing through Medina and Lorain counties seeking to block the pipeline. Construction in Ohio began in March after the Federal Energy Regulation Commission’s August approval of the plan and a federal judge’s December ruling that ended the main lawsuit trying to stop it.In south Oberlin, crews have set up access routes for workers and equipment to sites along state Route 58 and Reserve Avenue as well as West Hamilton Street and South Pyle-Amherst Road.The pipeline also will run through Pittsfield and New Russia townships. In all, about 5.11 acres of land will be used, according to a plan approved by FERC.

Ohio EPA seeks feedback on proposed pipeline to run through parts of Ohio Valley – The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public feedback on a natural gas pipeline slated to run through the eastern half of Ohio. Shell’s Falcon Pipeline would start in Harrison County and carry ethane gas to Beaver County in Pennsylvania.The Falcon Pipeline would be a 44-mile stretch through Carroll, Harrison and Jefferson Counties. It’s scheduled to start construction later this year, but the Ohio EPA is holding one more week of public comments on the potential impacts to Ohio’s sources of fresh water.Nearly two dozen people showed up at Harrison Central High School. Not even close to the 1,000 comments submitted to the Ohio EPA online. The stakes for the Falcon Pipeline are in backyards throughout the Ohio Valley. “This project will affect 515 family homes, 20 businesses,” said Cheryl Johncos of the Ohio Sierra Club. “Twelve public parks, five schools and six daycare centers.”Several Harrison County residents said they are worried about leaks into local water tables and the lack of documented maintenance plans from Shell on a pipeline stretching through rural landscapes.Industry representatives said the risks are not dire.”The Falcon Pipeline is a piece of crucial energy infrastructure we need to put in place,” said Mike Chadsey of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. “So, often we hear about what’s going on in the drilling side of things, but this is really the next step in the development of the Utica Shale play.”

Pennsylvania’s Phenomenal Increase in Natural Gas Production – Pennsylvania increased its permits for natural gas drilling by 51 percent in 2017 and its rig count by 65 percent, resulting in annual natural gas production increasing by 3 percent reaching a record 15 billion cubic feet per day, second only to Texas in natural gas production. The state’s permitting and drilling activity increase is a result of expanding regional pipeline capacity, moving natural gas to market centers outside of production areas. These new sources of natural gas are adding greatly to Pennsylvania’s economy and are increasing investment in the state. In the past, natural gas production in Pennsylvania was constrained by the lack of regional infrastructure to process and transport it out of the region. But, recently, several pipeline projects entered service including the Rockies Express Zone 3 expansion, moving natural gas westward from southwest Pennsylvania, and the Algonquin Incremental Market pipeline, primarily moving natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania into New England. Two other projects – the Rover Pipeline Project and the NEXUS Gas Transmission Project, are expected to begin operations during the next few months.

Endocrine Activity of Air Pollutants from Marcellus Drilling & Fracking – In the last decade unconventional oil and gas (UOG) extraction has rapidly proliferated throughout the United States (US) and the world. This occurred largely because of the development of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing which allows access to fossil fuels from geologic formations that were previously not cost effective to pursue. This process is known to use greater than 1,000 chemicals such as solvents, surfactants, detergents, and biocides. In addition, a complex mixture of chemicals, including heavy metals, naturally-occurring radioactive chemicals, and organic compounds are released from the formations and can enter air and water. Compounds associated with UOG activity have been linked to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes in humans and laboratory animal models, which is possibly due to the presence of endocrine active chemicals. Using systematic methods, electronic searches of PubMed and Web of Science were conducted to identify studies that measured chemicals in air near sites of UOG activity. Records were screened by title and abstract, relevant articles then underwent full text review, and data were extracted from the studies. A list of chemicals detected near UOG sites was generated. Then, the potential endocrine activity of the most frequently detected chemicals was explored via searches of literature from PubMed. Evaluation of 48 studies that sampled air near sites of UOG activity identified 106 chemicals detected in two or more studies. Ethane, benzene and n-pentane were the top three most frequently detected. Twenty-one chemicals have been shown to have endocrine activity including estrogenic and androgenic activity and the ability to alter steroidogenesis. Literature also suggested that some of the air pollutants may affect reproduction, development, and neurophysiological function, all endpoints which can be modulated by hormones. These chemicals included aromatics (i.e., benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene), several polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and mercury. These results provide a basis for prioritizing future primary studies regarding the endocrine disrupting properties of UOG air pollutants, including exposure research in wildlife and humans. Further, we recommend systematic reviews of the health impacts of exposure to specific chemicals, and comprehensive environmental sampling of a broader array of chemicals.

Pennsylvania judge accuses pipeline company of prioritizing profit over ‘best engineering practices’ – Pennsylvania regulators ordered the owner of a natural gas liquids pipeline to suspend service on its existing pipeline and stop work on two proposed pipelines along the same route in Chester County, Pennsylvania where sinkholes appeared earlier this year. An administrative law judge at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued her emergency order on Thursday in response to a petition filed by state Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D), who requested a halt to work on the pipeline project in West Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, a part of Chester County that he represents.Sunoco Pipeline LP, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, owns the existing Mariner East pipeline, an eight-inch-diameter pipeline built in the 1930s. The company also is building two additional natural gas liquids pipelines located along the same route. Mariner East 2 is a proposed 20-inch-diameter pipeline and Mariner East 2X is a proposed 16-inch-diameter pipeline. The natural gas industry is finding the Marcellus and Utica shales in southwestern Pennsylvania rich with natural gas liquids. Wider-diameter pipelines are needed to get all of the natural gas liquids to terminals where they can then be shipped to overseas petrochemical plants. “Sunoco has made deliberate managerial decisions to proceed in what appears to be a rushed manner in an apparent prioritization of profit over the best engineering practices available in our time that might best ensure public safety,” PUC Judge Elizabeth Barnes wrote in her order. Given the accident history of construction on the two new Mariner East pipelines, such as sinkholes and spills, “there is a grave risk of rupture” on the existing Mariner East pipeline,” Barnes ruled. She also noted that water supplies have already been damaged in West Whiteland Township.

Mariner East construction, operation halted again in Chester County – A Pennsylvania judge on Thursday halted construction of Sunoco’s two new Mariner East pipelines, as well as the operation of the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline in Chester County’s West Whiteland Township, granting an emergency petition by state Sen. Andy Dinniman.Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes said in an order that she was persuaded by Dinniman’s argument that the pipelines are a risk to public safety in the township, and granted his emergency petition for a halt to construction and operation of the pipelines until the PUC determines that they are safe.“I find there to be an imminent risk to the public and a need for immediate relief and further study to be done on ME1, ME2 and ME2X for the Commission and its Bureau of Safety Engineers to evaluate before construction should resume on ME 2 or ME2X in West Whiteland Twp. and before a potential catastrophic event occurs on ME 1,” the judge wrote in an order issued Thursday after two days of hearings on the Senator’s petition earlier this month.“Additionally, local and state government needs time to create emergency evacuation and notification plans and to educate the public before operations should resume.”Energy Transfer Partners, parent company of Sunoco, blasted the judge’s decision, which it said was a “significant departure from the law” and from PUC’s due-process procedures. It will ask PUC to review the order.“The entire energy industry should be concerned about today’s order and consider this result when making decisions regarding future capital investments in the state as it upends Pennsylvania’s entire regulatory environment,” the company said in a statement. The order reimposes a shutdown on the operation of Mariner East 1 that the PUC ordered in early March after sinkholes appeared at Lisa Drive, a West Whiteland site where the new lines are being built alongside the existing pipeline. The first order was lifted in early May after the PUC concluded that there was no problem with the integrity of the old line.

West Virginia Oil & Natural Gas Association, environmental group argue over study – A trade association and an environmental group are taking opposing positions on a study about groundwater contamination and natural gas development of the Utica Sale.The West Virginia Oil & Natural Gas Association said the University of Cincinnati study, slated to be published in the June issue of “Environmental Monitoring and Assessment,” is more research showing no impact on groundwater from shale gas development.However, the sampling in the study was not enough to be accurate, said Cheryl Johncox, an organizer of the Beyond Dirty Fossil Fuels initiative in Ohio, a program of the Sierra Club. The study is “really not something to get excited about,” she said. “I have to say it’s a very small sample size,” Johncox said. The study is titled “Monitoring concentration and isotopic composition of methane in ground water in the Utica Shale hydraulic fracturing region of Ohio.” Most of the monitoring took place in Carroll County and the surrounding area, including Stark, Columbiana, Harrison and Belmont counties. The study began in January 2012, at which time 150 drilling permits had been issued in Ohio, which increased to 1,600 by the end of February 2015, the study said. Researchers collected 180 samples through February 2015. Of those, 118 were collected from 24 drinking water wells, from two to eight times over the course of the study, in Carroll, Harrison and Stark counties. Sites were based on landowner interest and participation was voluntary, the study said. No relationship was found between CHI4 (methane) in ground water and its location to active well sites, the study said.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline construction begins with groundbreaking in Lewis County – Representatives of the oil and gas industry, local leaders and elected officials from around the state celebrated the first major step toward completion of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline project Wednesday with a groundbreaking ceremony for the Marts Compressor Station in Jane Lew. The station, which will provide compression to support the transmission of natural gas, marks the beginning of major construction on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, said Samantha Norris, communications specialist for Dominion.“Dominion Energy is very proud of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project,” she said. “This is a project that we’ve been working on for almost four years now. We are ready to see that construction begin.” The pipeline will cross more than 600 miles between Harrison County and Greensville County, Virginia, to transport natural gas produced in West Virginia to energy users in Virginia and North Carolina. Construction will require more than 3,000 workers over the course of the project, Norris said. “This project means jobs in the state of West Virginia,” she said. “It is being done in a sustainable manner, both environmentally and for the longevity of this pipeline being able to produce a resource for generations to come.” Projections show that there is more than enough natural gas in the region to keep the pipeline active, Norris said. “Many scholars and researchers have identified our region that we are sitting on here in West Virginia as the Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” she said. “We have a rich and abundant resource of clean-burning natural gas right below the surface. We are excited that through projects like this, we are to bring this much-needed resource to the individuals, homes and businesses that want to take advantage of it.”

Atlantic Coast Pipeline Faces Civil Rights Complaint After Key Permit Is Blocked – A federal court has invalidated a key permit for the Atlantic Coast pipeline project, a step that could give civil rights advocates more time to build their environmental justice case against the $6 billion project to carry natural gas from West Virginia to North Carolina.Opponents of the Atlantic Coast pipeline allege the Dominion Energy-led project would have a disproportionate impact on people of color living along its route.A group of community and statewide advocacy groups in North Carolina, along with the national Friends of the Earth, filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s External Civil Rights Compliance Office on Tuesday asking the agency to overturn North Carolina state permits for the pipeline and for a new environmental justice analysis of it. On the same day, a three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit for the pipeline, known as an “incidental take limit.” The judges ruled that that permit, designed to limit the number of threatened or endangered species that could be harmed or killed during the pipeline’s construction and operation, was too vague and could not be enforced. Dominion Energy said the decision only covered parts of the proposed 600-mile project and that the company will move forward with construction as scheduled.The community and environmental groups, meanwhile, say state and federal agencies failed to assess disproportionate health impacts the proposed pipeline project would have on minorities as required under the Civil Rights Act. They assert that an analysis by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission erred in how it compared state, county and local community data in ways that disguised the real discriminatory effect of the route. “As most of the North Carolina counties along the proposed ACP corridor have communities of color significantly above the state average, this decision greatly minimizes the apparent disproportionality in minorities impacted,” the complaint letter filed on Tuesday stated.

Despite federal court ruling, Atlantic Coast Pipeline construction continues – Despite the federal court order that’s vacating a key permit in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline construction, the work will not stop. Mike Cozad, the Community Liason for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project tells the Upshur County Commission, “There will be no downtime as a result of that judge’s decision.” This ruling comes from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hadn’t provided specific limits for the allowable impact on threatened and endangered species.”What they said was that a small percent of an unknown population would be affected and that’s just too vague,” says the President of the Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance April Pierson-Keating. 5 News reached out to Dominion Energy who wasn’t available for an interview but did offer a statement saying in part quote, “We can say that the impact of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling is on a small portion of the 600 mile route and there will be no impact in North Carolina” end quote. This ruling is based on an Incidental Take Statement, something that needs to be revised fast. ” Atlantic has five days to identify the affected areas, but we don’t think they can do it,” says Pierson-Keating. But Dominion Energy is already working towards that next step saying quote, “Our next steps will be to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who we expect will revise the Incidental Take Statement to provide limits that are more specific,” and as for Upshur County, the construction plans aren’t halting at all. “Nobody in West Virginia is benefiting from this pipeline. In reality, anybody near this pipeline is going to lose property value, they’re going to lose their way of life” says a board member for the Buckhannon River Watershed Association Kevin Campbell. But Dominion Energy continues to show reassurance in the project and their research saying quote, “We had more than 300 route adjustments to avoid environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands, wildlife habitats, drinking water sources, and sensitive geologic features” end quote.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline sees ruling sidelining only 10 miles of 2018 construction– Atlantic Coast Pipeline on Tuesday estimated that just 10 miles of its 2018 construction areas for the 600-mile natural gas pipeline project will need to be on hold because of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking ACP’s permit allowing incidental take of protected species. In total, it plans to avoid 21 miles in West Virginia and 79 miles in Virginia until a revised incidental take statement is issued, Atlantic Coast said in a statement Tuesday. Lead developer Dominion Energy on Tuesday updated the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the areas by milepost that it will avoid in the wake of the last week’s court ruling. Less than 2% of the total project mileage, or about 10 miles, is in 2018 construction spreads, it said. Dominion did not publicly release the precise areas involved because it said locations of protected species are generally treated as privileged. The appeals court late May 15 vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “incidental take” statement for the project, a document that estimates the likely harm to endangered or threatened species. The court concluded that “limits set by the agency are so indeterminate that they undermine the incidental take statement’s enforcement and monitoring function” under the act. Environmental litigants in the case continue to contend FERC needs to halt all construction on the project in response to the ruling. In its Tuesday letter to FERC, Dominion said it “confirms the company’s commitment to avoid construction in these areas,” adding it will not undertake any activity identified in the FWS biological opinion that is likely to affect protected species until the incidental take statement situation is resolved.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline to Sideline 100 Miles of Construction in Virginia and West Virginia – Builders of the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline told federal authorities they will delay construction along 21 miles in West Virginia and 79 miles in Virginia until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) issues a revised “incidental take statement,” which limits the number of threatened or endangered species that might be accidentally killed or harmed during development activities.Lead developer Dominion Energy filed documents Tuesday with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in response to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling last week . The court sided with environmental groups and their lawyers that the FWS’ initial review was not clear enough in the case of the $6.5 billion pipeline and vacated one of its key permits.Environmentalists worry that the 600-mile fracked gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina could pose risks for a rare bumblebee, the Roanoke logperch and Indiana and Northern long-eared bats and other threatened or endangered species. It will also cut through through forests, pristine mountains and involve the blasting, excavation and removal of mountaintops along 38 miles of Appalachian ridgelines as part of the construction.In its letter to FERC, Dominion said construction will be avoided along those 100 miles in West Virginia and Virginia where protected species might be put at risk until the revised incidental take statement is issued.Dominion did not disclose the specific areas it will avoid “because this information contains the locations of sensitive species which are customarily treated as privileged and confidential,” the company stated in a news release quoted by The Exponent Telegram .The Southern Environmental Law Center – which argued on behalf of the Sierra Club , Defenders of Wildlifeand Virginia Wilderness Committee at the appeals court – believes all pipeline construction cannot continue without a valid permit. “According to the Federal Regulatory Commission’s own certificate, FERC’s previous notices issued to Atlantic Coast Pipeline developers to proceed are no longer valid,” said senior attorney D.J. Gerken in astatement . “If what FERC is now saying is that developers can proceed to construction without the Fish and Wildlife Service’s valid permit, it is undermining its own requirements.”

New challenges for the disputed Atlantic Coast Pipeline – The proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would carry fracked gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina and possibly points farther south, has been hit with setbacks in recent weeks that raise questions about its future. Dominion Resources of Virginia, the pipeline’s operator, holds a 48 percent stake in the pipeline, while North Carolina-based Duke Energy holds 47 percent and Georgia’s Southern Company 5 percent. Dominion’s and Duke’s ratepayers would foot most of the bill for the $6.5 billion project.The most immediately consequential setback was last week’s federal court order voiding a key permit. On May 15, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had failed to set clear limits for the pipeline’s impact on threatened and endangered species. The order came in a case brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, and Virginia Wilderness Committee, one of four pending suits brought by the SELC related to permits for the pipeline.”Like other agencies, the Fish and Wildlife Service rushed this pipeline approval through under intense political pressure to meet developers’ timelines,” said D.J. Gerken, managing attorney in SELC’s office in Asheville, North Carolina. “It’s foolish and shortsighted to risk losing rare species for an unnecessary and costly pipeline boondoggle.”The pipeline’s construction – which got underway this week with a groundbreaking ceremony for a compressor station in West Virginia – imperils eight threatened or endangered species including a fish called the Roanoke log perch, two types of bats, and the rusty patched bumble bee that USFWS added to the endangered species list just last year. The appeals court panel found the agency’s limit on “take” – which includes harassing, harming, wounding, and killing – of at-risk species was too vague and didn’t satisfy basic legal standards. And because the USFWS’s so-called “incidental take statement” is needed for the construction permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), SELC has said it believes the appeals court order should bring work to a halt. However, the developers this week submitted plans to FERC indicating they plan to avoid construction only in habitat areas amounting to 79 miles in Virginia and 21 in West Virginia. A FERC spokesperson saidSELC’s request to halt all construction remains under consideration. The agency has come under criticismin recent years for being too eager to approve gas pipelines.

Mountain Valley Pipeline Protesters Erect New Tree Sit – Protesters in Jefferson National Forest erected a new protest site today aimed at blocking construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.Fern MacDougal is the latest in a string of protesters to take to the trees in protest of the 303-mile pipeline. In a press release, she said the pipeline threatens to damage the environment and the health and well-being of poor and oppressed communities.”This pipeline will catalyze the growth and expansion of gas extraction across Appalachia, an industry which has already caused permanent harm to many communities,” she said. “We are dedicated to resisting this reckless endangerment of the land and people as long as MVP continues to operate.” The new blockade is a 30-foot-tall platform suspended in the forest. Protesters say it’s hindering construction of an access road and boring site associated with the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Other protestors are currently camped out in trees along the pipeline’s path. That includes a tree-sit near the ridge on Peters Mountain and a monopod blockade on Pocahontas Road. The project also faces legal challenges by landowners. Construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is currently halted because of recent heavy rains. The pipeline developer was cited for erosion control problems in West Virginia last month. A request for comment from the pipeline developers was not immediately returned Monday.

New protester blocks pipeline workers – Another protester took a position Monday morning blocking construction in the Jefferson National Forest. People who have been to the location said that Fern MacDougal has created a new blockade, planning to stay on a platform about 30 feet off the ground. Pictures showed ropes tied to nearby trees for support and a banner at the site reads, “still here.” She’s hovering over Pocahontas Road in Giles County. MVP workers have closed it to the public and Forest Service workers are enforcing the restricted access. “Cutting through delicate karst topography and 300 miles of contiguous forest and family farms seized by eminent domain, MVP threatens to damage the health and wellbeing of poor and oppressed communities along the pipeline route by threatening the air, soil, and water,” MacDougal said in a statement. Her location is about a two-to-three-hour hike from another location on the road where Forest Service workers have restricted access, according to people who have been there. A woman going by the name “Nutty” was in her 55th day Monday blocking workers on the same Giles County road about three miles away in a so-called monopod. She’s been without access to fresh supplies, including food and water, for more than four weeks. Supporters have been staying nearby at a campsite monitoring the activity of workers during that time. A legal group filed a lawsuit last week asking a judge to grant a physician access to Nutty to provide medical care. Forest Service workers haven’t allowed anyone besides MVP workers past the taped-off area since they originally blocked access after Nutty ascended to her position. At least nine protesters have taken positions in trees, or other aerial positions, to block pipeline construction workers this year.

Tree-Sitters Launch 9th Aerial Blockade of Mountain Valley Pipeline – Resistance is growing against the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) designed to carry fracked gas 300 miles from northwest West Virginia to southern Virginia. On Monday morning, a woman named Fern MacDougal strung up a platform 30 feet in the air that is suspended by ropes tied to surrounding trees in Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest. MacDougal is now the ninth person in the last 85 days to stage tree-sits across the pipeline route in order to block its construction, according to Appalachians Against Pipelines. Her “aerial blockade,” as the resistance group calls it, is located on Pocahontas Road, which Mountain Valley plans to use to reach a construction site. Opponents of the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline, whose route cuts through one of the country’s most iconic hiking trails , worry about its threat to the area’s water supply and to wildlife habitat, as well as its potential harm to recreational lands and the health of surrounding Appalachian communities. Environmental groups also warn that the project sets a terrible precedent of building energy infrastructure through national forests. “Cutting through delicate karst topography and 300 miles of contiguous forest and family farms seized by eminent domain, MVP threatens to damage the health and wellbeing of poor and oppressed communities along the pipeline route by threatening the air, soil and water,” said MacDougal in a statement. She added, “This pipeline will catalyze the growth and expansion of gas extraction across Appalachia, an industry which has already caused permanent harm to many communities. We are dedicated to resisting this reckless endangerment of the land and people as long as MVP continues to operate.” MacDougal was inspired to follow the activism of a fellow tree-sitter named “Nutty,” who has protested from her monopod a few miles up Pocahontas road since March 28, and by David Buckel , a civil rights lawyer who died last month after setting himself on fire to protest environmental destruction.

Rutherford Institute suing over doctor’s failed attempt to examine Mountain Valley Pipeline protester —The Rutherford Institute is suing U.S. Forest Service officials on behalf of a Charlottesville doctor who makes medicine a ministry, saying officials violated his religious freedoms by preventing him from examining a Giles County tree-sitting pipeline protester. The Albemarle County-based constitutional rights organization filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court on behalf of Dr. Greg Gelburd. The lawsuit asks the court to force the Forest Service to allow Gelburd to examine the protester.Forest Service officials declined to comment, saying they have not reviewed the complaint. The lawsuit follows a First Amendment-based filing against federal officials submitted by state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, on behalf of persons who wanted to access the tree stand occupied by a protester nicknamed “Nutty.” That lawsuit claims that “by preventing people from using the road and requiring anyone who wants to reach the protest to hike through steep terrain,” the service is curtailing First Amendment rights. John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said Gelburd’s medical ministry is a cornerstone of his religious beliefs. “He does this all over the world as his mission as a Christian,” Whitehead said. “It is reprehensible that the rights of corporations and the rights of politicians are superseding citizens’ rights to medical care and religious and free speech rights.” Gelburd’s suit claims that orders signed by the officials resulted in him being threatened with arrest when he attempted to provide medical assistance to Nutty. The suit states that this violated his First Amendment right to free practice of his religion. “By preventing Gelburd from examining Nutty and providing her with medical advice and assistance, the defendants and government agents acting under the authority and direction of the defendants have substantially burdened Gelburd’s exercise of his religious belief, to wit, that he is called and required to provide medical care and assistance,” the lawsuit states.

Pipeline protester known as ‘Nutty’ has come down from her pole in Giles County – On her 57th day perched atop a pole, a Mountain Valley Pipeline protester decided to come down Wednesday. Known publicly only as “Nutty,” the woman wrote in a Facebook post that she ran out of food several days ago and was forced to leave her position on a small platform suspended from a 50-foot pole blocking a construction access road in the Jefferson National Forest.Law enforcement officers with the U.S. Forest Service had prevented the woman’s supporters on the ground from providing her with food and water since early April. “We knew it couldn’t last forever,” Nutty wrote in a post to the Facebook page of Appalachians Against Pipelines. “That’s how this works.”When the blockade was erected March 28 in the middle of Pocahontas Road in Giles County, organizers said they hoped to prevent construction crews from using the road to reach the top of Peters Mountain, where plans call for the buried natural gas pipeline to pass under the Appalachian Trial. Even with Nutty gone, the road remains blocked.On Monday, a second aerial blockade went up. Fern MacDougal is camped out on a platform suspended about 30 feet high from ropes strung across the road, about a mile farther up the mountain from where the first roadblock stood.“If we rely on one location, one tactic, or one group of people to stop this pipeline, we will fail,” Nutty wrote. “But we’re not. I know that as this one facet of the struggle draws to conclusion, more people in other places are gaining momentum. The fire has already caught; we must not let it die.” According to Appalachians Against Pipelines, the woman came down under her own power, was taken to a hospital to be checked out, and was given a citation to appear in court on charges that include blocking a road that had been closed earlier by the Forest Service.

Tree-sitters put their lives in the balance to foil Appalachian pipeline – Way out in the Appalachian hills, on the line between Virginia and West Virginia, after an hour-long backwoods hike up Peters Mountain, an orderly clutch of tents were surrounded by a plastic yellow ribbon that read, “police line do not cross”.Past that, a woman sat on top of a 50ft pole.Opposite the knot of tents where the woman’s supporters kept 24-hour vigil lay an encampment of police, pipeline workers, and private security bearing floodlights, generators and hard, binocular-bespectacled stares.At the time of our visit, she had been up there for more than 50 days and had vowed to not come down until the police extracted her – at great danger to her life – or until she was starved out. She ate only a tiny amount of food everyday at 6 o’clock. The platform on which she sat was about the size of a bathtub.On Wednesday 23 May, the protester, nicknamed Nutty, finally came down after a record-breaking 57 days spent in the trees – the longest monopod protest sit in US history – to stop a fracked natural-gas pipeline from being built through the state. Her final three days in the trees were spent without food. “I was and remain tremendously grateful to have been able to make an impact in the struggle against the Mountain Valley pipeline,” she wrote in a statement to the Guardian upon her descent. “And am committed to continuing to participate in the global struggle against the processes of violent extraction, and against the structures of colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy it feeds.”There are others, too, who remain in the forest and are still blocking construction by putting their lives on the line and refusing to move. On the far side of the mountain sits a man in a perch dangling from a tree. A handful of folks have also taken to the trees in a place called Little Teel Crossing, and just this Monday, a woman named Fern MacDougal made her new home in another aerial blockade on Peters Mountain. A mother and daughter team, nicknamed Red and Minor respectively, came down from the trees after more than 30 days, on property that has been in their family for more than seven generations.

Construction halted at Mountain Valley Pipeline work site following severe erosion in Franklin County – State regulators have put a stop to construction of part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline swamped by a rainstorm, saying work cannot continue until proper erosion control measures are established.Crews were using heavy equipment to cut trees and clear land along the natural gas pipeline’s right of way in Franklin County when heavy rains Thursday night and Friday morning swept away much of the soil they had unearthed.Both lanes of nearby Cahas Mountain Road were covered by up to eight inches of mud. “It’s clearly unacceptable,” Ann Regn, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said Sunday.According to both DEQ and Mountain Valley officials, none of the mudflow reached streams, where it could have done the most damage. Nonetheless, the agency is investigating how check dams and other erosion control measures failed to prevent the mess.Environmental regulators received several calls last week, before the rain started, from members of the public who were concerned that heavy equipment being used to remove trees and clear a 125-foot swath for pipeline construction was exposing the land to potential runoff problems.Although Mountain Valley crews had erosion control devices in place, “there were some things that completely disappeared” after the rains, including concrete barriers, Regn said. “Initial reviews indicate the controls were installed properly; however, the circumstances appear unusual and an ultimate cause is under investigation,” Mountain Valley spokeswoman Natalie Cox wrote in an email Friday.

Investigation underway into mudslide that halted pipeline construction – An investigation into what caused a mudslide to block a Franklin County road near construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is underway. Sediment broke through barriers Friday amid heavy rain, and neighbors said about a foot of mud blocked Cahas Mountain Road in Boones Mill. Pipeline workers installed new barriers on Monday and inspectors with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality continued to look into what caused the earth to slide down the hillside, according to DEQ spokeswoman Ann Regn. Many people have expressed concerns in the last four years about the negative effect construction could have on water quality. Regn said the mud did not reach any streams. “It appears that water was channeled and then carried this mass of mud downhill,” she said. She said workers stopped construction when the mudslide happened and they won’t resume until the area is stabilized. “They will be in the area for the next three or four days to conduct inspections and to investigate what happened and why,” she said. MVP spokeswoman Natalie Cox said workers reported the problem when it started and an initial review shows workers installed the controls properly. She echoed that no streams were affected. “The circumstances appear unusual and an ultimate cause is under investigation. Upon learning of the issue, MVP crews promptly began remediation activities, and the road was reopened about 5:30 p.m. Friday. The project team remains committed to the safe and responsible construction of this important underground infrastructure project,” Cox said. Regn said DEQ inspectors should know more about what caused the problem in about a week.

Mountain Valley Pipeline Construction is One Muddy Mess – State regulators have put a stop to construction of part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline swamped by a rainstorm, saying work cannot continue until proper erosion control measures are established.Crews were using heavy equipment to cut trees and clear land along the natural gas pipeline’s right of way in Franklin County when heavy rains Thursday night and Friday morning swept away much of the soil they had unearthed.Both lanes of nearby Cahas Mountain Road were covered by up to eight inches of mud. “It’s clearly unacceptable,” Ann Regn, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said Sunday.According to both DEQ and Mountain Valley officials, none of the mudflow reached streams, where it could have done the most damage. Nonetheless, the agency is investigating how check dams and other erosion control measures failed to prevent the mess. Environmental regulators received several calls last week, before the rain started, from members of the public who were concerned that heavy equipment being used to remove trees and clear a 125-foot swath for pipeline construction was exposing the land to potential runoff problems. Although Mountain Valley crews had erosion control devices in place, “there were some things that completely disappeared” after the rains, including concrete barriers, Regn said. Opponents have predicted that building a 303-mile buried pipeline along steep mountain slopes will dislodge sediment, which can contaminate private wells and public water supplies if it is allowed to enter nearby streams and wetlands.

New challenge to MVP project questions river crossing permit – In the wake of recent tragic school shootings, anxious parents are contemplating homeschooling to protect their children. After February’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Miami Heraldreported that more parents were considering the homeschooling option. And after Friday’s disturbing school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, a local ABC news affiliate in Alabama reported the increasing appeal of homeschooling. “If I had the time, I would teach my kids myself, and I would know that they’re safe,” a father of four told ABC station, WAAY31.A public school teacher interviewed by the channel disagreed with the idea of homeschooling. According to the news story, the teacher “says resorting to homeschooling is teaching your children to run from reality.”But that raises the question: Is compulsory mass schooling “reality”? Segregating children by age into increasingly restrictive, test-driven classrooms where they are forced by law to be unless a parent or caregiver liberates them is hardly “reality.” What’s worse is that young people are spending increasingly more time in this coercive “reality” than ever before.For young children ages six to eight, schooling increased from an average of five hours a day in 1981-82 to an average of seven hours a day in 2002-03. And for today’s teens, schooling consumes much more of their time than it did for previous generations, seeping into summertime and other historically school-free periods. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of teens were enrolled in school during July 2016, compared to only 10 percent enrolled in July 1985. In the case of teens, spending more time in school and school-like activities may be further separating them from the actual real world in which they previously came of age. As Business Insider reports: “Almost 60% of teens in 1979 had a job, compared to 34% in 2015.” Spending more time in the contrived reality of forced schooling and less time in authentic, multi-age, productive communities may be taking its toll on today’s youth.

Corps of Engineers suspends water permit for MVP –The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has temporarily suspended portions of a river crossing permit for the $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, Kallanish Energy reports. Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the developer of the under-construction natural gas line, received a streamlined federal review that is not allowed in cases of major stream crossings, pipeline opponents argued in a federal appeals court. Lawyers for five environmental groups fighting the pipeline urged the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to suspend the federal Clean Water Act permit for the entire pipeline until questions about crossings of the Elk, Gauley, Greenbrier and Meadow rivers in West Virginia can be answered. The Corps, which had approved the permit, agreed on Tuesday to temporarily block construction of those four river crossings, but refused to revoke the entire pipeline permit. The court gave lawyers for both sides a week to formally respond. The suspension of the permit could mean the MVP would have to seek individual permits for those four river crossings. The environmental groups contend that the pipeline will cross more than 1,000 waterways in its 300 miles. The streamlined review, called Nationwide 12, can only be used for projects in which stream crossings can be completed within 72 hours, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection said. That condition was added last year by the state to the Corps’ streamlined permitting for pipelines before the state allowed such permit reviews in West Virginia.

Army Corps of Engineers suspends parts of Mountain Valley Pipeline permit – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indefinitely suspended parts of nationwide permit 12 for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) just a day after an environmental coalition sued them in federal court for a stay on the project.According to a news release from the Sierra Club, who is part of the coalition, the move also comes after a direct request was sent to the Corps on May 15.In its suit, the environmental coalition alleges that MVP construction across the Elk, Gauley, Greenbrier and Meadows rivers could not be completed in time restrictions implemented in the permit.While the permit from the Corps does not include a time limit, it requires state input and approval to move forward.In the permit granted to MVP, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection added the stipulation that construction across the waterways in the route of the pipeline must be completed in 72 continuous hours.With MVP’s permit now partially suspended, the Sierra Club’s release said that the belief is that the interests of MVP may have to seek out individual permits for each crossing.“The suspension means MVP may have to seek individual permits for those four crossings,” the release reads. “However, advocates for clean air and water say that the Corps’s action falls short of what they have asked a federal appeals court for because it lacks a commitment to wait for the federal court to rule and does not apply to all of the pipeline’s stream crossings.”According to the Sierra Club, the pipeline the 300-mile long pipeline crosses waterways in West Virginia and Virginia more than 1,000 times. “These four stream crossings signal one big problem – the Corps’ slipshod approach to overseeing this project. West Virginians deserve thoughtful permitting, not thoughtless rubber-stamped approvals,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition in the release.

4 flown to hospital following oil tank explosion in Doddridge County – Four people were flown to the hospital after oil tanks exploded in Doddridge County Friday morning. A company was removing three oil tanks off a property on White Hair Lane, in West Union, at about 10 a.m. when the tanks exploded, said George Eidel, director of the office of emergency services in Doddridge County. The tanks were being “cut up for scrap, using some sort of torch,” Jake Glance, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said in an email. The tanks were not entirely empty and caught fire, he said. Four people were flown to burn centers for their injuries, Eidel said. According to the DEP’s spill report, oil spilled into the stream, but officials didn’t know how much oil was spilled. Eidel didn’t know which company was removing the tanks or where the four people were flown.

Federal regulators vote to limit practice of measuring climate impact of pipelines – Federal regulators appeared to defy a 2017 court ruling when they decided not to take greenhouse gas emissions into account as part of their review of natural gas pipeline applications. Last year, a federal court ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must fully consider the so-called downstream effects of a pipeline project’s greenhouse gases, particularly the effects of emissions from natural gas-fired power plants that contribute to climate change. .But in a 3-2 vote, FERC ruled Friday that federal laws do not require it to consider greenhouse gas emissions caused by the production or consumption of natural gas that would inevitably result from the approval of a pipeline project. The policy change wasn’t announced in its own separate order. Instead, it was tucked inside an otherwise routine decision rejecting an appeal of its approval of a pipeline project in New York proposed by Dominion Energy. Environmental groups and climate change activists have tried for years to get federal regulators to take greenhouse gas emissions into account when they review a natural gas pipeline application. In response to Friday’s decision, the Sierra Club, one of the groups that has been fighting to get FERC to take greenhouse gas emissions more seriously, hinted it may challenge the commission’s ruling in court.“The people demanded FERC do its job, and FERC refused. Then, the courts ordered FERC to do its job, but instead, it just keeps trying to evade the court’s order and shirk its responsibilities,”

Think-tank warns on US gas plant investment costs – US companies risk making hundreds of billions of dollars of unnecessary investments in gas-fired power plants over the coming decade because regulators are obstructing spending in lower-cost alternatives, a leading environmental think-tank has argued.Rocky Mountain Institute has calculated that US power generators are on course to invest about $500bn in new gas-fired plants by 2030, but argues that much of that capacity could be replaced by a combination of renewable energy, battery storage, improved efficiency and measures for reducing demand at peak times.It argues that companies that invest in these plants risk finding themselves stuck with higher-cost options for meeting demand, angering customers and potentially exposing them to competition from lower-cost rivals. Mark Dyson of RMI urged investors and regulators to make sure companies were not building plants that could turn out to be uneconomic, particularly if gas prices rise. Gas-fired plants are the largest source of electricity in the US, providing 32 per cent of the country’s power last year. In the “reference case” central projections set out by the government’s Energy Information Administration, the US is expected to add 54 gigawatts of combined-cycle gas-fired generation capacity by 2030, more than a quarter of the total added over that period. One of the crucial arguments for gas-fired plants is that they are despatchable, in other words capable of being called on to meet demand as needed. With US gas prices at about $2.80 per million British thermal units for the Henry Hub benchmark, gas is also one of the lowest-cost forms of power generation in the US.

NH Supreme Court on natural gas pipeline expansion could provide spark for Northern Pass – The state supreme court has given new life to Eversource’s multiyear effort to use money from electricity rates to help pay for a natural gas pipeline, and possibly to the stymied Northern Pass hydropower transmission project.The high court on Tuesday struck down a 2016 Public Utilities Commission ruling that denied Eversource’s request to use electric rates to pay for increasing capacity on the Algonquin pipeline, which carries natural gas from New York through Connecticut to eastern Massachusetts and Boston.The court sent the matter back to the PUC, and Eversource officials didn’t say what specific action they might take.However, the ruling could spark the totally unrelated Northern Pass project, the wildly controversial proposal to bring hydropower from Quebec through New Hampshire. Eversource “will revisit the PUC’s denial of the Power Purchase Agreement with Hydro Quebec … over the Northern Pass transmission line,” spokesman Martin Murray said in a statement.

Tokyo Gas receives first LNG cargo from Cove Point – Japan’s largest city gas provider, Tokyo Gas, on Monday received the country’s first long-term delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from U.S. shale producers through its 20-year contract with Dominion Energy, Kallanish Energy reports. The 70,000-ton cargo left Cove Point last month, passed through the Panama Canal, and arrived at Tokyo Gas’ Negishi LNG terminal, at the Yokohama port, on board of the LNG Sakura early on May 21. The volume unloaded is equivalent to the annual gas supply of 220,000 households, Tokyo Gas said, in a statement. The recently completed Cove Point terminal is a “premier facility” in Maryland, giving customers direct access to the Marcellus and Utica shale plays – two of the most prolific natural gas basins in North America. Through the joint-venture, Cove Point, Tokyo Gas, Sumitomo and Gail, have each contracted for half of the marketed capacity. The JV has committed to purchasing 2.3 million tons per annum (MTPA) from Cove Point, of which 1.4 MTPA is to be delivered to Tokyo Gas.

U.S. liquefied natural gas projects buoyed by China import talks (Reuters) – China’s interest in reducing its trade surplus with United States through increased energy imports could advance plans for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, said energy executives involved in developing new facilities. The White House and China on Saturday said a U.S. trade team would travel to China to explore new energy and agricultural deals. The joint communiqué lowered trade tensions, lifting stock markets in Asia and the United States on Monday. There are over two dozen proposed U.S. LNG plants waiting for customer commitments to reach a final investment decision, many of them looking to China for deals. About 13 percent of U.S. LNG cargos went to China last year, according to data provider Genscape. China imported 5.6 billion cubic feet per day last year, making it the world’s largest buyer after Japan. Delfin is proposing a floating LNG facility in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and aiming for a final investment decision as early as this year to go ahead and produce up to 13 million metric tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG for export. “For us, it’s strictly been about marketing to China,” said Greg Vesey, chief executive of LNG Ltd , which is developing an LNG plant in Louisiana and another in Nova Scotia in Canada. It hopes to reach a final investment decision on the U.S. project by year-end and begin exports in 2022, he said. “If you look at some forecasts for 2035, there are really only two places that have significant increases in LNG imports. Europe goes up about 100 mtpa and China goes up about 200 mtpa,” Vesey said. Texas LNG, which is proposing a 4-mtpa export facility in Brownsville, Texas, and has five early-stage agreements with Chinese customers, hopes to make a final decision next year, about six months behind its original goal.

Cheniere Moves Ahead With Corpus Christi LNG Expansion (Reuters) – Cheniere Energy Inc said on Tuesday it had approved the construction of a third liquefaction unit, known as a train, at its Corpus Christi export terminal in Texas, the first new liquefied natural gas project to go ahead in the United States since 2015.The Houston-based company said it will instruct its contractors to proceed with the full build, which started in a limited fashion in late 2017. The first two trains at Corpus Christi are expected to enter service next year. The positive investment decision comes just days after the White House and China said a U.S. trade team would travel to China to explore new energy deals, prompting company executives to note that China could increase LNG imports to reduce its trade surplus with United States.

BP secures 2 mil mt/year of LNG from Louisiana’s Venture Global Calcasieu Pass – BP has secured 2 million mt/year of LNG from the Venture Global Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana, under a 20-year sales and purchase agreement with Venture Global LNG, the companies announced Monday. BP will purchase the LNG on a free on board, or FOB, basis starting from the commercial operation date of the facility, currently expected in 2022. The agreement brings the exporter’s total contracted quantity under the 20-year binding SPA to 6 million mt/year. BP joins Venture Global’s other LNG partners, which include Shell, Edison S.p.A. and Galp. Venture Global LNG is developing two export facilities in Louisiana — the 10 million mt/year Venture Global Calcasieu Pass facility at the intersection of the Calcasieu Ship Channel and the Gulf of Mexico, and the 20 million mt/year Venture Global Plaquemines LNG on the Mississippi River. “As we finalize our arrangements for Calcasieu Pass and proceed towards financing, we have now begun to execute binding commitments for our Plaquemines project, which will also supply low-cost, long-term LNG to our global customers,” Venture Global LNG co-CEOs Mike Sabel and Bob Pender said. Venture Global has raised $525 million of capital to date to support the development of its projects.

NYMEX June natural gas futures down 2.5 cents at $2.822/MMBtu on weather outlook – NYMEX June natural gas futures fell in overnight US trading as revisions to weather forecasts look likely to cap early cooling demand.At 6:30 am EDT (1030 GMT) the contract was 2.5 cents lower at $2.822/MMBtu.National Weather Service outlooks show above-average temperatures across the whole US except for the Southeast in the six-to-10-day period, but receding to encompass just a little more than the western half of the country in the eight-to 14-day period. Early demand for cooling has led to higher gas demand of late. According to the Energy Information Administration’s latest update for the week ended May 16, an 8% week-on-week rise in power burn as temperatures rose past 75 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Texas and the Southeast led a 4% uptick in total gas consumption.

Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report – Cooling Demand Set To Moderate – The EIA reported a +91 Bcf change in storage for the week ended May 18. This brought storage to 1.629 Tcf. It compares to the +75 Bcf change last year and the +89 Bcf change for the five-year average. Going into this storage report, a Reuters survey of traders and analysts pegged the average at 92 Bcf with a range of +85 Bcf to +100 Bcf. We expected 85 Bcf and were 7 Bcf lower than the consensus. We were off by 6 Bcf on this storage report. Natural gas prices are still squeezing higher today following a neutral storage report. July contracts hit a high of $2.97/MMBtu. With natural gas prices now testing what we believe to be the new upper limits of the price band ($2.80-3/MMBtu), if the weather turns bearish, we could see prices establish a “higher low” before trending higher yet again. As we wrote before, the long-range weather outlook from ECMWF-EPS did show below-average temperatures starting June 4. Commodity Wx Group tweeted today that there are also signs from CFS 16-20 day suggesting much colder weather models going forward.Combining this observation with what we saw in the 15-day cluster from the ECMWF-EPS this morning, we could be looking at colder-than-normal temperatures in the East starting the second week of June. As you see in the first chart above, the cluster breakdown shows the majority of the ensemble members predicting colder-than-normal weather in the East. The composite on the 2m temperature anomaly chart for June 8 also shows colder-than-normal temperatures in the Northeast. As a result, CDDs will decrease, but warmer-than-normal temperatures in Texas and West coast will help keep demand well supported.

NYMEX June gas remains buoyant at $2.954/MMBtu amid fundamental support – NYMEX June natural gas futures were slightly higher ahead of Friday’s open, amid lingering fundamental support. At 6:30 am ET (1030 GMT) the contract was up 1.4 cents at $2.954/MMBtu having traded in a range of $2.925-$2.955/MMBtu in the US overnight. Efforts to rebuild inventories slowed down in the most recent storage report, which outlined a net 91 Bcf injection for the week ended May 18 beating consensus estimates and historical averages, but trailed the robust 106 Bcf build reported the previous week. Total working gas stocks currently sit at 1,629 Bcf, still 804 Bcf below the year-ago level and 499 Bcf below the five-year average of 2,128 Bcf. Warmer weather which ramped up cooling demand during the storage report week is seen to have limited the amount of gas available to be moved into underground stocks. Additional warming which should keep cooling demand elevated is in store in the midrange, as revised National Weather Service outlooks show above-average temperatures spanning the bulk of the US in the six-to-10-day period and the entire country in the eight-to-14-day period.

Steps toward making Louisiana a crude-exporting powerhouse, part 2. – The sharp increase in U.S. crude oil exports over the past couple of years is tied primarily to Texas ports – mostly Corpus Christi and the Houston Ship Channel. Louisiana, a distant second in the crude-exports race, has a long list of positive attributes, including the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) – the only U.S. port currently capable of fully loading the Very Large Crude Carriers that many international shippers favor. It also has mammoth crude storage, blending and distribution hubs at Clovelly (near the coast, connected to LOOP) and St. James (up the Mississippi). In addition, St. James is the trading center for benchmark Light Louisiana Sweet, a desirable blend for refiners. The catch is that almost all of the existing pipelines at Clovelly flow inland – away from LOOP – many of them north to St. James. That means infrastructure development is needed to reverse these flows southbound from St. James before LOOP can really take off as an export center. Today, we continue a blog series on Louisiana’s changing focus toward the crude export market and the future of regional benchmark LLS.

State appeals ruling against Bayou Bridge Pipeline – The state Department of Natural Resources has appealed a judge’s ruling that it had improperly permitted the controversial Bayou Bridge Pipeline. Filed Tuesday (May 22), the appeal asserts that DNR staff did not violate laws designed to protect the public and environment when it issued the permits for portions of pipeline. “We feel our staff did their jobs the right way … in issuing the permits,” DNR spokesman Patrick Courreges said Wednesday. Judge Alvin Turner Jr., of the 23rd Judicial District Court in Ascension Parish, had ruled last month that the permit should be reconsidered and that DNR must require the pipeline company to develop a emergency evacuation and response plans for areas near the pipeline.The proposed 162-mile pipeline pipeline would run from St. James Parish to Lake Charles. A portion would cut through the Atchafalaya River Basin, a vast and ecologically rich swampland that conservationists hope to protect from potential oil spills. DNR’s permit applies to a 17-mile portion of the route in coastal zone-classified areas of St. James and Assumption Parish. After the ruling, lawyers representing environmental groups and St. James residents demanded that DNR order the halt of pipeline work. But Courreges said DNR couldn’t stop work until either his agency decides not to appeal or the time to file an appeal runs out, which would have been mid-June. DNR’s appeal kills any potential stop-work order based on the ruling. Meanwhile, work on the pipeline has intensified. Residents and activists report that workers set up powerful lights at a work site in Assumption Parish on Friday and worked through the night.

Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan Puts 68 National Parks at Risk – Sixty-eight National Parks along the coastal U.S. could be in danger from devastating oil spills if President Donald Trump ‘s plan to open 90 percent of coastal waters to offshore oil drilling goes through, a reportreleased Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Parks Conservation Association found.The report, SpOILed Parks: The threat to our coastal national parks from expanded offshore drilling , summarizes the danger drilling poses to parks that saw 84 million visitors in 2017, supported 59 thousand jobs and earned $5.7 billion. Parks threatened include iconic pieces of American culture and landscape, from the Statue of Liberty National Monument to the Everglades National Park to Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.”These places matter, and we cannot completely protect them if we start to drill off our coasts,” senior vice president of conservation programs for the National Parks Conservation Association Mark Wenzler told The San Francisco Chronicle .Expanded drilling threatens six national sites in the Bay Area alone.Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the expanded drilling plans in January in response to an executive order by Trump ordering the rethinking of drilling bans implemented by former President Barack Obama, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. According to the new report, Zinke’s plan would lease federal waters for oil and gas drilling and allow drilling in waters where it hadn’t been allowed for decades, including areas off the coasts of Alaska and Florida and in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. “It may be stating the obvious to some,” Franz Matzner, director of federal affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The San Francisco Chronicle of the report, “but it may not be obvious to the Trump administration, which is barreling ahead with a plan that is unprecedented.”

Environment, tribal groups rally to fight Line 3 oil pipeline — With just weeks left before Minnesota regulators decide the fate of Enbridge Energy’s contentious Line 3 oil pipeline proposal, activists are gearing up their years-long fight against the project. A cadre of environmental and tribal groups camped in downtown St. Paul on Friday and Saturday for an anti-Line 3 rally and to take pledges from people who promise to continue fighting the pipeline, if it’s approved. “The pledge of resistance says that we stand united against this proposed pipeline because of the threat it proposes to our air, our water, wild rice, Anishinaabe treaty territory and our climate,” said Akilah Sanders-Reed, a climate activist. “As one of the dirtiest kinds of oil on earth, tar sands oil contributes to climate change more than any other kind of oil.” The activists’ camp was outside the Public Utilities Commission’s office. The agency’s five commissioners will have final say on whether to give Enbridge the necessary permits to build Line 3. Sanders-Reed said it was crucial to bring the anti-pipeline message right to the commission’s doorstep. “We know that the public utilities commissioners are suposed to be making decisions that benefit the people of Minnesota. And so we’re here outside their offices throwing this celebration of resistance to show them the world we believe in,” she said. The pipeline would take crude from Canada’s oil sands region and zig-zag across northern Minnesota toward the southwestern tip of Lake Superior near Duluth. Enbridge wants to replace its current Line 3 along a new route across northern Minnesota that avoids reservations but still travels through sensitive natural areas, including the Mississippi River headwaters and wild rice waters.

How Enbridge Helped Write Minnesota Pipeline Laws, Aiding Its Line 3 Battle Today – The Minnesota section of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline accounts for nearly 300 miles of the longest crude oil transport system in the world, and it is failing. The multi-billion-dollar transnational corporation has applied for a permit to replace it. Opposition from tribes in the region and environmental groups is slowing the project, but the process at times appears so tilted in Enbridge’s favor that, watching the court battles and utility commission meetings, it almost feels like Enbridge wrote the rules.At one point in its application to build the new Line 3, Enbridge listed all the federal and state laws that regulate the permitting and construction of pipelines . Nearly all the Minnesota laws originated in one 1987 Senate bill: S.F. 90 .This bill was accompanied by unprecedented pipeline industry lobbying – led in spending by Enbridge – and included subtle but major handouts to pipeline companies. One such provision imposes a sweeping limit on the public’s ability to oppose new pipelines, including the Line 3 replacement project. According to environmental lawyer Paul Blackburn, one of the largest barriers to pipeline regulation is actually the federal Pipeline Safety Act, which preempts most state regulations. He called the law “a beautiful example of how to appear to regulate something without actually regulating it at all.”Still, Blackburn said there are ways for states to regulate pipelines, with some of the most powerful being zoning, permitting, and routing laws. However, S.F. 90 includes industry-friendly language that undercuts these and other potential regulations. The bill allowed pipeline operators to classify their own data after a spill, making it inaccessible to the public. It instituted stiff civil and criminal penalties for pipeline company employees who failed to alert the authorities or destroyed evidence after a spill, but the companies were subject only to relatively small fines.

State appeals court sends Enbridge pipeline permit back to county committee over insurance issue – A state appeals court on Thursday ordered a permit issued by Dane County for a high-capacity oil pipeline be sent back to the county committee that approved it so it can decide whether the pipeline owner has met state-mandated insurance requirements. A three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeals said a group of landowners near Enbridge Energy’s expanded pumping station in the town of Medina has the right to challenge whether Enbridge had properly shown that it carries insurance that state law requires for operators of pipelines that carry hazardous liquids. The court also said that Enbridge had failed to show the Dane County Zoning and Land Regulation Committee that it carried the insurance, including coverage for “sudden and accidental pollution liability.” The decision reverses one issued in September 2016 by Dane County Circuit Judge Peter Anderson, who had also stricken a condition from the county-issued permit which required that Enbridge carry an additional $25 million in cleanup insurance. The appeals court, however, declined to renew the additional insurance requirement. Anderson struck the requirement because of a new state law that barred the county from imposing its own insurance requirement above the insurance required by the state. The county had continued to include the requirement in the pipeline’s permit – even though it knew it couldn’t be enforced – in case changes were made to the state law in the future. Enbridge needed the permit so it could expand a pumping station in the town of Medina for its pipeline that carries Canadian tar sands oil to a refinery in Illinois. Dane County Assistant Corporation Counsel David Gault said Thursday that the county agrees with the court’s opinion. “We are gratified that the court found the county’s argument persuasive that the appropriate remedy was for the circuit court to remand the case back to the county zoning agency, rather than simply striking the insurance conditions that were clearly an integral part of the zoning committee’s decision to issue the (permit),” Gault said in a statement.

New sand mine planned for rebounding Eagle Ford shale – There’s been a race to build new sand mines in West Texas’ Permian Basin to satisfy all of the hydraulic fracturing needs for oil wells. But now there are signs of growth in South Texas’ long-stagnant Eagle Ford shale.Fort Worth-based Black Mountain Sand said it plans to construct a new sand mine south of San Antonio near the Eagle Ford to serve the growing oil and gas production in the region as crude oil prices continue to rebound.After building two mines in the Permian, Black Mountain said it is turning its attention to the Eagle Ford. The company acquired 2,300 acres in Atascosa County with the aim of completing a mine by the end of this year that would churn out 2.2 million metric tons of sand annually. The mine would employ about 75 people.Ever-increasing large volumes of sand and water are required to frack the shale oil and gas wells to shatter the tough shale rock and release the petroleum. “With the (Eagle Ford) region currently producing approximately 12 percent of the U.S. total oil production and growing, the need for local sand has become paramount for our customers,” said Rhett Bennett, founder and chief executive of Black Mountain Sand.

Apache commits to Enterprise’s 658-mile Shin Oak pipeline – Houston producer Apache Corp. said it partnered with a major Houston pipeline firm to transport its natural gas liquids from West Texas’ Alpine High development to the Houston area.Apache signed on as an anchor customer of Enterprise Products Partners’ Shin Oak NGL pipeline that will traverse 658 miles from Reeves County, Texas to Enteprise’s storage hub just east of Houston in Mont Belvieu.The pipeline is under construction and is slated for completion in the second quarter of 2019. Apache now has the option of purchasing a 33 percent stake in the Enterprise pipeline.Earlier this month, Apache signed on as a major customer of the planned EPIC Crude Oil pipeline project to move crude from Apache’s Alpine High to Corpus Christi, from where the oil can either be refined or exported.The Alpine High development, which is west of Fort Stockton in the Permian Basin, is expected to produce plenty of oil and natural gas liquids, called NGLs, much of which are used to manufacture plastics and other petrochemicals.Apache is committing to move more than 200,000 barrels of NGLs a day on the Shin Oak pipeline, which will have a capacity of 550,000 barrels a day initially.”Alpine High is an enormous hydrocarbon resource that encompasses rich gas, dry gas and oil-bearing horizons. This agreement provides an efficient long-term outlet for the tremendous volume of NGLs that Apache plans to produce from the rich gas window of the play,”

Pipeline officials: Oklahoma City neighborhood safe after crude oil spill – Company officials say residents in a northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood do not need to be concerned after a crude oil spill earlier this month.On May 10, Oklahoma City firefighters and hazmat crews were called to the 16900 block of N. Pennsylvania Ave. following reports of a yellow liquid spewing from the ground near an oil well site. Authorities were able to determine that a pipeline had ruptured and was releasing raw crude oil into the air.TAC 4: This is what the raw crude oil looked like when firefighters arrived earlier in the 16900 block of N Pennsylvania. This is all taken care of now. Cleanup will begin soon. pic.twitter.com/g0ZYwiDd0L – Oklahoma City Fire (@OKCFD) May 10, 2018After the spill was contained, residents in the SilverHawk neighborhood began assessing the mess left behind.“You can see the pipe up here on the roof, you can see the film all over the windows and it’s kind of, it’s an oily substance,” Kevin Mashburn told News 4 as he wiped his hand across his window.Officials with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission say about 15 barrels of oil were sent into the air, and settled on more than 220 homes and lawns in the area. OCC field inspectors, environmental professionals and a representative from the pipeline company, Sunoco, went to the neighborhood to check on the clean up process.

Keystone Pipeline project focus of court hearing (AP) – Trump administration attorneys defended the disputed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline in federal court on Thursday against environmentalists and Native American groups that want to derail the project. President Barack Obama rejected the 1,179-mile (1,800-kilometer) line proposed by TransCanada Corporation in 2015 because of its potential to exacerbate climate change. President Donald Trump revived the project soon after taking office last year, citing its potential to create jobs and advance energy independence. Environmentalists and Native American groups sued to stop the line and asked U.S. District Judge Brian Morris to halt the project. They and others, including landowners, are worried about spills that could foul groundwater and the pipeline’s impacts to their property rights. Morris did not immediately rule following a four-hour Thursday hearing in federal court in Great Falls. U.S. government attorneys asserted that Trump’s change in course from Obama’s focus on climate change reflected a legitimate shift in policy, not an arbitrary rejection of previous studies of the project. “While the importance of climate change was considered, the interests of energy security and economic development outweighed those concerns,” the attorneys recently wrote.

New Mexico senators want buffer around World Heritage site (AP) – A swath of northwestern New Mexico’s oil and gas country would be off limits to drilling under proposed federal legislation that seeks to make permanent a buffer zone that has kept development away from Chaco Culture National Historical Park and other sites held sacred by Native American tribes.The measure introduced Tuesday by U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich would prevent future leasing or development of minerals owned by the federal government within a 10-mile radius around the park.The two New Mexico Democrats and tribal officials voiced their concerns about the potential of expanded drilling despite decisions over the years by federal land managers to defer any interest by the oil and gas industry in parcels that fall within the buffer. Most recently, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in March halted a lease sale over concerns about cultural impacts after hundreds of people protested.Heinrich acknowledged that the San Juan Basin has a drilling history that dates back decades. As one of the oldest natural gas production areas in the U.S., the basin already contains thousands of wells, compressor stations and other infrastructure and many leases have yet to be developed. Still, Heinrich said there’s consensus that the Chaco area is important and that such places should be “off the table.”

Trump Opens Door to Dangerous Fracking in Northern Arizona – – A new Trump administration plan proposes to auction off 4,200 acres of public land for oil and gas development in northern Arizona. The lands straddle the Little Colorado River, are within three miles of Petrified Forest National Park, and are near habitat for a federally threatened fish called the Little Colorado spinedace. Drilling and fracking would threaten to deplete and pollute groundwater in the Little Colorado River Basin.The Bureau of Land Management is planning the September auction – which would convey development rights to fossil-fuel companies – without any site-specific public or environmental review, as required by federal law. Planning documents cite Trump policies that forego National Environmental Policy Act analysis to fast-track fracking on public lands. According to BLM, about 90 percent of new oil and gas wells on public lands are fracked.“This dangerous plan puts national parks, precious groundwater and wildlife in the crosshairs. We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking is a dirty, dangerous business that consumes enormous amounts of water and threatens wildlife and public health. Northern Arizonans won’t tolerate public lands being sacrificed as gifts from Trump to the fossil fuel industry.” The BLM is using a shortcut to bypass the analysis of fracking’s harm to the land and water that is required under NEPA. The sweeping “determinations of NEPA adequacy,” or DNAs, presume that oil and gas development complies with the agency’s 30-year-old resource management plan, which predates the U.S. fracking boom. The agency is also foregoing tribal consultations, stating that “tribal consultation was adequate for the [resource management plan].” By deferring all analysis until the drilling-permit stage – after industry has the right to develop the land – the bureau is unable to deny subsequent drilling plans.

Trump Administration proposes to sell protected land in Arizona for fracking – The Trump Administration has announced a proposal to sell 4,200 acres of public, protected land in northernArizonafor oil and gas development. The area in question crosses the Little Colorado River and is located only three miles from Petrified Forest National Park. It also is close to the habitat for the Little Colorado spinedace, a threatened species of fish. Oil and gas industrial activity, such as fracking, could also threaten the groundwater in the Little Colorado River Basin, potentially affecting drinking water. In September, the Bureau of Land Management is planning to auction the land to the highest bidder, without sufficient environmental and public review. The Center for Biological Diversity is pushing back against the Trump Administration as it advances its pro-industry agenda. “This dangerous plan puts national parks, precious groundwater and wildlife in the crosshairs. We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking is a dirty, dangerous business that consumes enormous amounts of water and threatens wildlife and public health. Northern Arizonans won’t tolerate public lands being sacrificed as gifts from Trump to the fossil fuel industry.” Under guidelines issued in January 2018 by the Trump Administration, the Bureau of Land Management has made several assumptions in its approval process and has delayed any detailed analysis until the drilling permit stage. At that point, the site will already have been sold for oil and gas development. “Fracking or drilling development could be catastrophic for the region’s groundwater,” McKinnon said. “This is Trump’s energy dominance policy at work, where nothing matters except fossil-fuel interests.”

More than 4000 acres of land in northern Arizona to be auctioned for gas and oil exploration – Cronkite News – A Trump administration plan calls for auctioning off about 4,200 acres of public land for oil and gas development in northern Arizona, but environmental groups are poised to block the measure in court.It’s been more than five months since the White House rolled back environmental protections for oil and gas leasing on public lands.Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said his group is already involved in federal lawsuits to protect public lands from oil and gas exploration.“What we’re seeing in this instance is the Bureau of Land Management, as we’re seeing all over the country, skipping environmental and public review when holding this lease sale and conveying development rights to industry. And that’s dangerous,” he said.The center said the land straddles the Little Colorado River, and drilling and fracking in the area would threaten to deplete and pollute groundwater.McKinnon said the administration is ignoring federal law. “The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal decisions, like oil and gas leasing, be subject to approval under that law. In this case they’re skipping that step,” he said.Lawsuits already have been filed by his organization against BLM in Ohio and Colorado, specifically related to fracking. McKinnon said his organization is prepared to do the same in Arizona. Trump has billed his energy strategy as part of his promise to bring U.S. “energy dominance” to the rest of the world, according to Time.

Over 4000 Acres Of Land In Northern Arizona To Be Leased For Gas And Oil Exploration – The Trump administration will auction off over 4,000 acres of public land for oil and gas development in northern Arizona.Environmental groups are poised to block the measure in court.It’s been over five months since the White House rolled back environmental protections for oil and gas leasing on public lands. Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said his group is already involved in federal lawsuits to protect public lands from oil and gas exploration. “What we’re seeing in this instance is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), as we’re seeing all over the country, skipping environmental and public review when holding this lease sale and conveying development rights to industry. And, that’s dangerous,” he said. McKinnon said the Trump administration is ignoring federal law, explaining, “The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal decisions, like oil and gas leasing, be subject to approval under that law. In this case they’re skipping that step.” Lawsuits have already been filed by his organization against BLM in Ohio and Colorado, specifically related to fracking. McKinnon said his organization is prepared to do the same in Arizona.

Stopping a Dakota Access Pipeline Leak in Under 10 Minutes? A Fairy Tale, Say the Standing Rock Sioux – Nine minutes. That’s the longest it would take to detect a leak and shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline(DAPL) should the crude oil within begin escaping into the North Dakota prairie or the Missouri River. At least that’s what Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the pipeline’s owner, says. It’s a claim that the Standing Rock Sioux tribe calls completely unrealistic given the company’s “inadequate” emergency response plan. This is just one of the problems examined in a new report recently submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which last February approved DAPL’s controversial route snaking less than a mile from the tribe’s reservation and upriver of tribal lands. In more than 300 pages, the document details many issues that the government never fully investigated when conducting its environmental review in 2016. The report, written by the Standing Rock Sioux and independent experts, delves into treaty agreements, the history of government takeover in the region, the inadequacy of ETP’s risk analysis, and how one accident could ruin land, water, and a way of life. But ETP’s assertion that it could shut the pipeline down in under 10 minutes is what the report takes particular issue with – something tribe member Dave Archambault Sr. calls “pure folly” and a “fairy tale.” Don Holmstrom, an author of the report who worked with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board for 17 years, says that after noticing a break, workers would first have to decide what steps to take to stop the oil from coursing through the steel, an often stressful judgment. Then they must find and close the emergency flow restriction devices one by one, which can take time depending on how much pressure has built up in the pipeline. Of course, all that hinges on whether ETP realizes there’s a leak in the first place. In reality, oil pipeline leaks frequently don’t even register with control systems and operators; a farmer will simply notice a growing stain darkening a remote field and call it in. According to records obtained by the tribe and its technical team, no one at the company would be able to tell something was amiss if less than 1 percent of the 600,000 billion barrels it transports each day was oozing out. That comes to 6,000 barrelsâ€•still a lot of oil.

Dems introduce bill to block Alaska refuge drilling | TheHill: A group of House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday that would block oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The bill from Reps. Jared Huffman(D-Calif.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and others would reverse Congress’s decision last year to approve drilling in a portion of ANWR, which was included as part of the Republican tax overhaul. The sponsors of the anti-drilling legislation warned that with the Trump administration hoping to hold an auction for drilling rights next year, lawmakers have to work fast to overturn the provision.“Plain and simple: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a national treasure worth protecting for future generations,” Huffman said in a statement. “Although Republicans in Congress snuck a dangerous drilling provision into their tax bill last year, it’s not too late to keep drills out of this iconic landscape,” he continued. “But time is not on our side: we need to repeal this oil and gas giveaway soon to ensure that the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain remains unspoiled for future generations to experience and enjoy.” Last year’s tax law passed with only GOP support. After decades of efforts by Alaskans, the oil industry and Republicans, it for the first time allowed drilling in ANWR’s small coastal plain, subject to the same environmental rules as other federal land areas. The Interior Department was instructed in the law to hold at least two drilling rights lease sales in the next decade, limited to 2,000 acres leased. Polling has consistently showed that most Americans oppose ANWR drilling. The conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports found last year that 53 percent of Americans opposed it, and only 12 percent supported it. But most Alaskans and state leaders have long supported drilling.

The Rise of Shale Oil – St Louis Fed – Technological advances that allow oil producers to extract crude oil from shale rock formations have reshaped the landscape of U.S. oil production over the last 10 years. Since 2008, shale oil production has increased from around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) to over 5 million bpd and now accounts for more than half of total U.S. crude oil production. This increase in production is unmatched on a global scale: In 2017, the U.S. became the largest oil-producing country with an average of 14.6 million barrels per day of crude oil, petroleum, and biofuels, 2 million barrels per day more than Saudi Arabia.Shale oil production is different from traditional production in two key ways:

Multiple wells can be drilled from one platform.
It appears that shale oil production responds differently to changes in oil prices compared with traditional wells.

The figure shows both the spot price of oil (as measured by West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla.) and the U.S. production of oil broken down by shale and conventional production. Between June 2014 and February 2016, the price of WTI oil dropped from $105.79 to $30.32 (red line). At the time, the belief was that the precipitous drop in prices would lead oil-producing firms in the U.S. to cut back production in shale oil fields. During the period, total oil production in the U.S. dropped from about 9.6 million bpd to about 8.6 million bpd (sum of blue and orange bars). Production has subsequently has recovered to about 10 million bpd – in part because of a strengthening global economy. However, one might ask how a sustained decline in oil prices would affect U.S. oil production that has become increasingly reliant on extraction from unconventional oil fields.

The Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme Explained: How Lousy Shale Economics Will Pull Down The U.S. Economy – Few Americans realize that the U.S. economy is being propped up by the Shale Oil Industry. However, the shale oil industry is nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme, so when it collapses, it will take down the U.S. economy with it. Unfortunately, the reason few Americans understand how lousy the economics are in producing shale oil and gas is due to the misinformation and propaganda being put out by the industry and energy analysts.I am quite surprised how bank analysts and brokerage firms can continue to fund the shale oil and gas or advise clients to purchase stock when the industry is behaving just like the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme. The only big difference is that the U.S. Shale Industry is a Ponzi at least four times greater than Madoff’s $65 billion fiasco.I decided to discuss in detail why the U.S. Shale Oil Industry was a Ponzi Scheme in my newest video. I provide some interesting charts that explain how the huge decline rates and massive debt are going to bring down the industry, much quicker than the market realizes.In the video, I show just how quickly two of the largest U.S. shale oil fields decline. The chart below was developed by Enno Peters at the ShaleProfile.com website. The Permian, the largest shale basin in the United States, decline rate was a stunning 60% in just two years. Thus, the companies producing oil in the Permian are forced to spend boatloads of Captial Expenditures (CAPEX) to grow or just maintain production:Furthermore, I explain how many of these shale oil companies are using debt to fund operations. However, lousy shale economics are not allowing these companies to pay back debt, so they must borrow new debt to pay back existing debt. This is the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme. The table below shows how EOG has structured its debt to be repaid over two decades:

US oil and gas production is leaving Saudi Arabia and Russia behind – For seven straight years, the US has pumped more oil and gas out of the ground than any other country. That lead will only widen, states the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The independent energy statistical agency describes the US as “the undisputed oil and gas leader in the world over the next several decades.” It comes as Russia and Saudi Arabia are constraining production to lift prices, while new technology is making vast new pools of once unprofitable hydrocarbons economical to extract in the US. In an analysis released May 21, the EIA estimates that the US pumped the equivalent of 30 million barrels of oil per day in 2017, a record high. (The figure includes all hydrocarbons such as natural gas, crude oil and others.) That puts the US well ahead of other major producers, including Russia and Saudi Arabia. US natural gas production stole the top spot from Russia in 2008, and exceeded Saudi Arabia’s oil production in 2013. Since 2008, US petroleum and natural gas production has jumped nearly 60%. What happened? New fracking and drilling technology unlocked cheap ways to extract US shale oil and natural gas, even as consumption stayed steady. That has allowed the US to satisfy more of its own consumption, while relying on Canada for most (40%) of its imports. Petroleum imported from Persian Gulf countries now accounts for just 1.74 million barrels per day, or 17% of the total. While good news for the US economy, it has done nothing to stem the overwhelming threat confronting the planet: rising temperatures. Scientists agree the pace of climate change form human emissions is now unprecedented. If catastrophic global warming is to be stopped, we need to aim for zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. The period when we can safely burn our hydrocarbons is almost over.

The United States is a net energy importer from Canada – EIA – Canada is the largest energy trading partner of the United States, based on the combined value of energy exports and imports. Although the value of bilateral energy trade with Canada has varied over the past decade, driven primarily by changes in the prices of oil and natural gas, the overall structure of bilateral energy trade flows has changed relatively little, with the value of U.S. energy imports from Canada consistently exceeding the value of U.S. energy exports to Canada by a large margin. Increasing energy commodity prices in 2017 led to growth in the value of both exports to and imports from Canada. Based on the latest annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau, energy accounted for $18 billion, or about 6%, of the value of all U.S. exports to Canada. Energy accounted for $73 billion, or about 24%, of the value of all U.S. imports from Canada in 2017, up from 19% in 2016. Canada is the main source of U.S. energy imports and the second-largest destination for U.S. energy exports behind only Mexico. Crude oil accounts for most U.S. energy imports from Canada, averaging 3.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2017. Canada is the largest source of U.S. crude oil imports, providing 43% of total U.S. crude oil imports in 2017. The value of U.S. crude oil imports depends on both volume and price. In 2017, the value of U.S. imports of Canadian crude oil increased, reaching $50 billion, as a result of both an increase in oil prices and an increase in volume. Canadian crude oil imported by the United States is largely produced in Alberta and consists mainly of heavy grades shipped primarily to the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions. Until the removal of restrictions on exporting U.S. crude oil in December 2015, virtually all U.S. crude oil exports went to Canada. Since the United States began exporting more crude oil to other countries, Canada’s share of U.S. crude oil exports has fallen, although Canada still remains the largest destination for U.S. crude oil exports. In 2017, for the first time, the United States exported more crude oil, in total, to other countries (794,000 b/d) than it exported to Canada (324,000 b/d). U.S. crude oil exports to Canada are typically light sweet grades that are shipped to the eastern part of the country.

Environmental Groups Vow to Block Tar Sands Oil Project: ‘We Are Going to Not Allow Kinder Morgan to Finish This Pipeline’ — As the clock ticks down until the May 31 deadline for the controversial Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project, which will triple the amount of tar sands being transported from Alberta to the British Columbian coast, the campaign against its expansion is spreading abroad. On Sunday in Seattle, more than 120 miles south of where the pipeline hits the coast, hundreds of “kayactivists” took to the water to protest against the pipeline. Kinder Morgan has given the federal government of Canada until the end of the month to resolve outstanding financial and legal issues surrounding the pipeline. Last week, in order to appease the Texan oil company, Trudeau’s government announced that it will effectively give Kinder Morgan a “blank check” ” to indemnify ” the pipeline “against any financial loss,” suffered if they build the pipeline. The move seems to have backfired and emboldened everyone fighting the pipeline. And as the May 31 deadline gets closer, there is a growing awareness not only of the threat that the pipeline poses to the climate, but also to marine life as it would massively increase the tanker traffic up the west coast of Canada and the U.S. Indeed, last week the Natural Resources Defense Council warned Kinder Morgan that the pipeline project, could be “illegal” under the Endangered Species Act, which is seen as one of the world’s strongest species protection laws.”It’s not just about the spills, it’s not just about the orcas,” said Graham Clumpner, one of the paddlers with the Mosquito Fleet: “The bigger issue that we are all facing is climate change ,” he said. “We are going to not allow Kinder Morgan to finish this pipeline.”

For sale: stalled pipeline project, protesters included – Justin Trudeau’s pipeline nightmare may be only getting started. As Kinder Morgan Inc. drives a hard bargain in Canada’s attempt to save the Houston-based company’s embattled Trans Mountain project, the prime minister could end up fighting for an asset that hardly anybody wants. Pipeline giant Enbridge Inc., for one, signaled it doesn’t. Trudeau’s government upped the ante this week, with Finance Minister Bill Morneau pledging to indemnify the C$7.4 billion ($5.8 billion) project for politically motivated delays and backstop any company willing to take it on. Trudeau said “there are alternatives if Kinder Morgan” decides it wants out.Alberta’s oil sands are a crucial part of Canada’s economy and the expanded pipeline to British Columbia’s shore could help get better prices for the country’s crude in Asia. But finding an alternative investor in the face of fierce opposition in the coastal province would be easier said than done, according to Jihad Traya, manager of strategic energy advisory services for HSB Solomon Associates LLC in Calgary. “I’m a little perplexed,” Traya said, adding that any attempt to sell the project would be very cumbersome. “So, what part are they going to take over? The expansion? And then, that creates some very interesting intra-agency issues.” Kinder, which is set to decide by the end of the month whether to abandon the project because of the heated political battle over its construction, was lukewarm in its response to Morneau’s public comment as talks with the government continue. Chief Executive Officer Steve Kean said that “while the discussions are ongoing, we are not yet in alignment and will not negotiate in public.”

Kinder Morgan set to pull the plug on Canadian crude export pipeline – Ever since Canada’s Liberal government came to power in late 2015, the 525,000 b/d Northern Gateway and the 1.1 million b/d Energy East pipeline projects fell off the radar, while a final investment decision remains due on the 870,000 b/d Keystone XL pipeline, which received a fresh lease of life after US President Donald Trump resurrected it last year. The clock is now ticking fast for the 590,000 b/d Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, for which developer Kinder Morgan has a set a self-imposed deadline of May 31 on whether to proceed with the estimated $5.6 billion investment. The expectation is that Kinder will likely pull the plug, as all other options start thinning out. The Houston-based midstream company has been pursuing the expansion project since 2012 and has also received full shipper commitment from nearly a dozen oil sands producers in Alberta and refiners in the US. But last month Kinder decided to stop further spending unless it had clarity on the way forward. Its stance came after relentless opposition from stakeholders in British Columbia, particularly the provincial government, which has not spared any efforts to come in the way of shovels being put in the ground thus summer. Be it court cases or the announcement of an 18-month study to determine the environmental impact of a likely spill from the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, the ostensible plan of the British Columbia government was to delay start of construction, which in turn would drive up project costs and deliver its desired goal of Kinder abandoning the project. Such actions irked neighbor Alberta, where the provincial government has been banking on the Trans Mountain Expansion to ensure uninterrupted growth of its multibillion-dollar oil sands industry.

Two of Canada’s biggest provinces are feuding over an oil pipeline–Trudeau is caught in the middle – An increasingly bitter dispute between two of Canada’s largest provinces over expansion of a pipeline for tar sands oil is pitting environmentalists against business and posing a major political challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the heart of the battle are plans to triple the capacity of the 65-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline, allowing more crude to flow from northern Alberta to the port of Burnaby, B.C. , adjacent to Vancouver. The province of Alberta says the $5.7 billion project, which the Trudeau government approved in late 2016, is crucial to the growth of its oil industry, which is increasingly dependent on tar sands extraction facilities. In Alberta, tar sands are mined in massive open-pit operations and must be partially processed to create a crude known as diluted bitumen before it is sent by pipeline or rail to be refined into gasoline and other petroleum products. Because of capacity constraints and roadblocks facing several other pipeline projects, the province is finding it increasingly difficult to get its oil to market.Next door, in the province of British Columbia, the eco-friendly government of Premier John Horgan is challenging the pipeline expansion in court, claiming better protection of the province’s scenic coastline is needed in case of a tanker spill. That has enraged Alberta, which has vowed to retaliate by introducing legislation to “turn off the taps” of diesel and gasoline to British Columbia, vital to that province’s economy. “On the one hand, they don’t want our oil, and on the other hand, they are suing us to give them our oil,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said this week after British Columbia hit back with another lawsuit and said it will seek an injunction to stop Alberta from cutting off its fuel supply. Earlier this year, Alberta also threatened to retaliate against its neighbor by banning the sale of British Columbian wine in the province.

Oil, Gas, And Fracking News Reads 28May 2018 – Part 1

The Real 401K Plan Manager 28May 2018

Oil, Gas, And Fracking News Reads 28May 2018 – Part 2

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