Oil, Gas, And Fracking News Reads: 03November 2019 – Part 1

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

Here are some selected news articles from the week ended 02 November 2019.

This article is a feature every Monday evening on GEI.

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A graphic snapshot of natural gas supply and demand and the usual synopsis of weekly reports

Oil prices were down just a bit this past week, as a major rally on Friday nearly reversed four days of lower prices…after rising more than 5% to a month high $56.66 a barrel last week on a drop in US crude supplies, a promise of deeper output cuts from OPEC, and hopes for a U.S.-China trade deal, the price of US light sweet crude for December delivery tracked lower for the first time in five days on Monday, falling 85 cents to $55.81 a barrel on weak Chinese industrial data and forecasts for a US crude oil inventory build… oil prices fell a second day on Tuesday ahead of the expected inventory increase, and ended 27 cents lower at $55.54 a barrel, after earlier hitting a low of $54.61 a barrel when Russia said it’s too early to talk about deeper output cuts, as expectations for large drops in gasoline and distillates supplies offset concerns about crude supplies…prices were little changed early Wednesday after the API had reported a small build in crude supplies, but then tumbled after the EIA reported a larger than expected increase, with oil prices falling to as low as $54.42 a barrel before recovering to $55.06 a barrel, a loss of 48 cents on the day…oil contracts came under renewed selling pressure on Thursday after reports that Chinese factory activity shrank for a sixth straight month while the country’s service sector activity was growing at its slowest pace since February 2016 and continued lower to end down 88 cents at $54.18 a barrel after an oil spill from the Keystone pipeline in North Dakota shut off deliveries of tar sands crude to the Cushing Oklahoma oil depot…oil prices finally moved higher on Friday on stronger-than-expected economic reports from both the US & China, then rallied to finish $2.02 or 3.7% higher at $56.20 a barrel after Chinese state-media said the US and China had reached “consensus on principles” on trade…thus, despite being down more than 5% at one point, oil prices ended down less than 1% for the week, boosted on Friday by strong US jobs data, a fall in the U.S. rig count, and Chinese trade hopes…

Natural gas prices, on the other hand, saw their largest weekly gain since January as the long awaited cold arrived and the quoted price switched to the always higher priced December contract… after falling five out of the six prior weeks and ending at $2.300 per mmBTU last Friday, the contract price of natural gas for November delivery rose 14.6 cent Monday and 15.1 cents on Tuesday before trading in that contract expired at $2.597 per mmBTU as the weather models for early November indicated colder than normal temperatures for most of the country east of the Rockies…meanwhile, the natural gas contract for December delivery, which had started the week at $2.459 per mmBTU and risen 9.6 cents on Monday and 8.4 cents on Tuesday, rose another 5.2 cents on Wednesday, before falling back 5.8 cents on Thursday when the weekly storage report indicated more gas had been added to storage than analysts expected…but prices jumped another 8.1 cents on Friday on the early outbreak of November cold to end the week at $2.714 per mmBTU, a gain of 10.4% for the December contract and 41.4 cents or 18% higher than the quoted prices for November gas at the beginning of the week…

The natural gas storage report for the week ending October 25th from the EIA indicated that the quantity of natural gas held in storage in the US increased by 89 billion cubic feet to 3,695 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which meant our gas supplies were 559 billion cubic feet, or 17.8% more than the 3,136 billion cubic feet that were in storage on October 25th of last year, and 52 billion cubic feet, or 1.4% above the five-year average of 3,643 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been in storage as of the 25th of October in recent years….this week’s 89 billion cubic feet injection into US natural gas storage was 4 billion cubic feet higher than the average forecast for a 85 billion cubic feet injection from analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts, and it was 24 billion cubic feet above the average 65 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been added to gas storage during the fourth week of October over the past 5 years, the 31st such average or above average storage build in the last 33 weeks…the 2,519 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been added to storage over the 31 weeks of this year’s injection season is the second most for the same period in the modern record, eclipsed only by the record 2573 billion cubic feet of natural gas that were injected into storage over the same 31 weeks of the 2014 natural gas injection season, a cool summer when there were no injections below 76 billion cubic feet….

With US natural gas supplies now solidly above the 5 year average, in contrast to a year ago, when we were heading into winter with a deficit from normal of more than a 500 billion cubic feet, it seems it would an appropriate time to take a look at how we got here…it so happens that John Kemp of Reuters produced a natural gas chartbook to go with one of his articles this week that will facilitate that…John sends out the articles he publishes on Reuters, along with his daily digest of best in energy news and his research notes, free to those who subscribed to his mailings…if you’d like to be on his list for such mailings, go to this webpage and provide your name and email address: https://twitter.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=92fd2e3ec7962cda008f0732a&id=a5736ab8e1

Most of John’s Reuters articles include a chartbook with graphics relevant to topic discussed in the article, but since they’re usually linked by a small shortened url embedded in the article, it’s likely that few readers see them…the natural gas chartbook from which we selected the following graphs opens as a pdf and is here: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/7/7118/7100/US%20NATURAL%20GAS.pdf and it came with his October 29th article titled U.S. gas market struggles with persistent oversupply...since this article ran before the release of this week’s storage report, these graphics do not include this week’s data…

The first graph that we’re including below shows the quantity of natural gas in storage, in billions of cubic feet, in the lower 48 states over the period from January 2015 up to the week ending October 18th, 2019 as a red line, the quantity of natural gas in storage in the lower 48 states over the “prior year” from the period shown by the red graph as a yellow line, which would thus be from January 2014 up until the end of 2018, and the average of natural gas in storage over the 5 years preceding those same dates shown as a dashed blue line…at the same time, the light blue shaded background on the graph shows us the range of the amount of natural gas in storage for any given time of year for the 5 years prior to the years shown by the red graph…thus the light shaded area on the far left of the graph shows us the five year average from 2010 to 2014, while the light shaded area on the far right of the graph shows us the five year average from 2014 to 2018, with the rest of it between those dates…the graph also shows us the normal range of natural gas in storage as it fluctuates from season to season, with natural gas in storage underground normally building to a maximum by the end of October, falling through the winter, and usually bottoming out at the end of March…

By following the course of the red line, we can see that natural gas supplies began setting record highs in the Fall of 2015, and continued to set seasonal highs until the Fall of 2016, topping out at a record 4,047 billion cubic feet on November 11th of that year…however, by the winter of 2017-18, natural gas supplies were approaching historical lows for the season, as evidenced by the red graph falling to the bottom of the range…that situation was exacerbated during the first week of January 2018, when one cold snap burned 11.5% of our natural gas supplies in a week’s time…supplies vis-a-vis the norm recovered a bit from there, but by the end of that winter our natural gas supplies were 38.3% lower than they were the prior year, which you can see in the separation between the red and yellow graphs for 2018 above…then during the summer of 2018, air conditioning demand that was above normal resulted in lower than normal additions to storage, and our supplies dropped well below the norm for the time of year heading into last winter, as evidenced by the red graph tracking far below the normal range…hence, by the time we headed into that winter, natural gas supplies had fallen to a 15 year low; and natural gas prices had hit 4 year high, and by November 26th, 2018, natural gas supplies were at a 16 year low for the season….however, a milder than normal December took the pressure off, and natural gas supplies eventually began the slow climb back towards normal which we’ve witnessed this year…

The next graph below shows us how much natural gas was added to storage during the main part of each annual injection season of the past decade…while the totals on this graph only go up to October 18th of each year, natural gas is normally added to storage up until the first week of November, so this isn’t quite a complete picture…also note that John’s numbers differ from the injection season totals i have been quoting because the totals i’ve quoted start with the week ending March 29th, and thus go back to March 23rd….i’ve been including that week in my totals because this year that week had an anomalous early injection of 23 billion cubic feet…either way, this year’s total to date is the second largest on record…

The next graphic from John’s chart booklet below shows monthly US natural gas production from the beginning of 2000 up to August of this year, which is all we have confirmed data for…monthly gas production is indicated by yellow dots, while the prior 12 month average from any date is tracked by the white linear graph…we can obviously see that US natural gas output has rapidly accelerated over the past two years, after the two year slump precipitated by record low drilling and an associated downturn in completions over 2015-2016…remember that production for each new gas well typically drops by 80% after the first two years and tails off after that, so for output to rise from this elevated production level, more wells will have to be drilled and completed than are currently being completed…it’s been called the red queen syndrome, since frackers have to run faster and faster each year just to stay in the same place…

The graph below shows the quantity of natural gas used for electric power over the 2006 to 2019 time frame, with the monthly gas usage tracked by yellow dots, while the dashed white linear graph tracks the average annual consumption over the prior year for any given date…the peaks are evidently the annual summer highs for air conditioning demand, while the wintertime base probably reflects the trend more accurately…note that the 12 month moving average has nearly doubled over the time frame this graph shows, as more natural gas generating capacity has been added by US utilities while coal plants have been retired…in 2018, the electric power sector accounted for 35% of domestic natural gas use..

The next graph shows US natural gas imports and exports, in billions of cubic feet per month, over the historical record from 1973 to August of 2019, with imports shown as a dijon yellow graphic above the zero line, and exports shown as a dark brown graphic extending below the zero line….the white linear graph then tracks the difference between the two metrics as a “net imports” figure, which has historically been a positive number, but over recent months has flipped to a negative number as exports have exceeded imports….historically, more than 90% of our natural gas imports have come by pipeline from Canada, while almost all of our exports have gone by pipeline to both Mexico and Canada…our exports of LNG is a relatively recent phenomena, rising from 1% of our total exports in 2014 to nearly 50% of the total in recent months…as a result , our net natural gas exports in the first-half of 2019 doubled the year-ago levels for the second year in a row..

Lastly, we’ll include John’s graph of natural gas rig counts over the past decade….the natural gas rig count low that we hit in August 2016 was the lowest on record; but the fracking era high of 1,606 rigs of September 7th, 2008 preceded this what’s shown on this graph…however, natural gas rigs at one time numbered over 4,500, during the natural gas drilling boom of the 70s, when natural gas prices were four times what they are now….this week natural gas rigs fell to a 34 month low, but there’s still 50 more of them now than at the nadir in 2016…

The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA

US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending October 25th showed that because of a big jump in our oil imports and a decrease in our oil exports, we had surplus oil to add to our stored supplies for the sixth time in the past seven weeks…our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 840,000 barrels per day to an average of 6,697,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 438,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 356,000 barrels per day to an average of 3,327,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 3,370,000 barrels of per day during the week ending October 25th, 1,196,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week…over the same period, the production of crude oil from US wells was reported to be unchanged at a record 12,600,000 barrels per day, so our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from well production totaled an average of 15,970,000 barrels per day during this reporting week..

Meanwhile, US oil refineries were reportedly processing 15,998,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 25th, 133,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil they used during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA reported that a net average of 714,000 barrels of oil per day were being added to the supplies of oil stored in the US….hence, this week’s crude oil figures from the EIA appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 743,000 barrels per day less than what was reportedly added to storage plus what our oil refineries reported they used during the week….to account for that disparity between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA inserted a (+743,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”….with that much oil unaccounted for again this week, it means that one or all of the oil metrics that the EIA has reported and that we have just transcribed have to be seriously off the mark…however, since the media treats these figures as gospel and since they drive oil pricing and hence decisions to drill for oil, we continue to report them just as they’re seen & believed by everyone else (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) indicated that the 4 week average of our oil imports rose to an average of 6,268,000 barrels per day last week, still 16.5% less than the 7,509,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year….the 714,000 barrel per day net addition to our total crude inventories included a withdrawal of 100,000 barrels per day from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which means that 814,000 barrels per day were added to our commercially available stocks of crude oil….this week’s crude oil production was reported to be unchanged at a record 12,600,000 barrels per day because the rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was unchanged at a record 12,100,000 barrels per day, while a 29,000 barrel per day decrease to 456,000 barrels per day in Alaska’s oil production was not enough to impact the final rounded total…last year’s US crude oil production for the week ending October 26th was rounded to 11,200,000 barrels per day, so this reporting week’s rounded oil production figure was 12.5% above that of a year ago, and 49.5% more than the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production fell to during the last week of June of 2016…

Meanwhile, US oil refineries were operating at 87.1% of their capacity in using 15,998,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 25th, up from 85.2% of capacity the prior week, and close to normal for the pre-winter refinery maintenance season…however, the 15,998,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week was still 2.6% below the 16,417,000 barrels of crude per day that were being processed during the week ending October 26th, 2018, when US refineries were operating at 89.4% of capacity….

With the increase in the amount of oil being refined, gasoline output from our refineries was also higher, increasing by 86,000 barrels per day to 10,184,000 barrels per day during the week ending October 25th, after our refineries’ gasoline output had increased by 100,000 barrels per day the prior week….but even with those increases in gasoline output, this week’s gasoline production was 1.7% lower than the 10,364,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year….at the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) rose by 205,000 barrels per day to 4,970,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 77,000 barrels per day over the prior week…but even with those two increases in distillates output, our distillates’ production this week was still fractionally below the 4,983,000 barrels of distillates per day that were being produced during the week ending October 26th, 2018….

Even with the increase in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week decreased for the 13th time in 19 weeks and for the 27th time in thirty-four weeks, falling by 3,037,000 barrels to 220,057,000 barrels during the week to October 25th, after our gasoline supplies had decreased by 3,107,000 barrels over the prior week….our gasoline supplies were down again this week as the amount of gasoline supplied to US markets increased by 194,000 barrels per day to 9,784,000 barrels per day, while our imports of gasoline fell by 24,000 barrels per day to 673,000 barrels per day and while our exports of gasoline rose by 27,000 barrels per day to 652,000 barrels per day….after this week’s decrease, our gasoline supplies were 2.7% lower than last October 26th’s inventory level of 226,169,000 barrels, and but remained roughly 2% above the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…

Likewise, even with the increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels fell for the 21st time in the past 31 weeks, decreasing by 1,032,000 barrels to 226,169,000 barrels during the week ending October 25th, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 2,715,000 barrels over the prior week…our distillates supplies fell by less this week even though the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, increased by 187,000 barrels per day to 4,263,000 barrels per day, because our exports of distillates fell by 197,000 barrels per day to 1,012,000 barrels per day while our imports of distillates rose by 25,000 barrels per day to 158,000 barrels per day…after this week’s inventory decrease, our distillate supplies were down by 5.2% from the 126,322,000 barrels of distillates that we had stored on October 26th, 2018, but actually increased to around 11% below the five year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year, as prior years saw greater decreases during the same week …

Finally, with this week’s jump in oil imports coupled with the decrease in our oil exports, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage rose for the eighth time in twenty weeks and for the eighteenth time in 40 weeks, increasing by 5,702,000 barrels, from 433,151,000 barrels on October 18th to 438,853,000 barrels on October 25th….that increase lifted our crude oil inventories to 1% above the five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, and to more than 30% higher than the prior 5 year (2009 – 2013) average of crude oil stocks as of the last weekend of October, with the disparity between those comparisons arising because it wasn’t until early 2015 that our oil inventories first rose above 400 million barrels…since our crude oil inventories had generally been rising over the past year up until July, after generally falling until then through most of the prior year and a half, our oil supplies as of October 25th were 3.0% above the 426,004,000 barrels of oil we had stored on October 26th of 2018, but at the same time were 3.5% below the 454,906,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on October 27th of 2017, and 9.1% below the 482,578,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on October 28th of 2016…

This Week’s Rig Count

The US rig count fell for the 10th time in 11 weeks and for the 33rd time in 37 weeks over the week ending November 1st, and is now down by more than 24% since the end of last year….Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs running in the US fell by 8 rigs to a 31 month low of 822 rigs this past week, which was also down by 245 rigs from the 1067 rigs that were in use as of the November 2nd report of 2018, and 1107 fewer rigs than the shale era high of 1929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 2nd of 2014, the week before OPEC began their attempt to flood the global oil market…

The number of rigs drilling for oil decreased by 5 to a 30 month low of 691 oil rigs this week, which was also 183 fewer oil rigs than were running a year ago, and quite a bit below the recent high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10th, 2014…at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas bearing formations fell by 3 rigs to 130 natural gas rigs, the least natural gas rigs since December 23 2016 and hence a 34 month low for gas rig drilling activity, down by 63 rigs from the 193 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, and way down from the modern era high of 1,606 rigs targeting natural gas that were deployed on September 7th, 2008…in addition to those, a vertical rig classified as miscellaneous continued to drill on the big island of Hawaii this week, in contrast to a year ago, when there were no such “miscellaneous” rigs deployed..

Offshore drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico increased by 1 rig with 21 Gulf rigs running this week, as another rig was added to those drilling offshore from Louisiana this week…the 21 rigs drilling in Louisiana’s offshore waters are now 3 more rigs than the Gulf of Mexico rig count of 18 a year ago, when 17 rigs were drilling in Louisiana waters and one was drilling offshore from Texas…in addition to the Gulf, one rig continues to drill offshore from the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, whereas a year ago the only offshore rigs were in the Gulf…hence, the national total of 22 offshore rigs is up by 4 rigs from the 18 rigs that were deployed offshore a year ago…meanwhile, offsetting the rig that was added in Louisiana’s offshore waters this week, a platform from which there had been drilling through an inland body of water in southern Louisiana was shut down this week, leaving just one such “inland waters’ rig active in the state and nationally…that’s down by 2 from a year ago, when 3 ‘inland waters rigs” were deployed in southern Louisiana…

The count of active horizontal drilling rigs was down by 11 rigs to 717 horizontal rigs this week, which was the least horizontal rigs deployed since April 21st, 2017 and hence is a new 30 month low for horizontal drilling…that was also 212 fewer horizontal rigs than the 929 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on November 2nd of last year, and also well down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014….on the other hand, the directional rig count increased by 2 rigs to 53 directional rigs this week, but those were down by 20 from the 73 directional rigs that were operating during the same week of last year…in addition, the vertical rig count increased by 1 to 52 vertical rigs this week, while those were down by 13 from the 65 vertical rigs that were in use on November 2nd of 2018…

Details on this week’s changes in drilling activity by state and by major 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 oil & gas producing states, and the table below that 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 November 1st, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (October 25th) and this week’s (November 1st) count, the third column shows last week’s October 25th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and the number running before the equivalent weekend 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 the 2nd of November, 2018…

In the Texas Oil Districts that encompass the Texas portion of the Permian basin, Texas Oil District 8, or the core Permian Delaware, had three more rigs added this week, while Texas Oil District 8A, or the northern Permian Midland, and Texas Oil District 7C, or the southern Permian Midland, both dropped a rig from a week ago…with the total Permian rig count down by 1, that means that the two rigs that were pulled out of New Mexico had been operating in the western reaches of the Permian Delaware…meanwhile, the rig that was removed from the Mississippian shale had been operating in Oklahoma, since the Kansas rig count was unchanged at zero, as was the rig that was removed from the Granite Wash, since activity in Texas Oil District 10 was also unchanged…on the other hand, the rig that was pulled out of the Haynesville had been operating in Texas, since the northern Louisiana rig count was unchanged at 31 while drilling in Texas Oil District 6 was down a rig to 21…that Haynesville rig, plus the two rigs that were pulled out of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus, account for all of this week’s natural gas rig changes; everything else that moved was targeting oil…but we should also note that other than the changes shown in the major producing states above, Florida also had a rig shut down this week, while they still have one remaining; a year ago, there was no drilling in Florida whatsoever…

Utica Shale well activity as of Oct. 26:

• DRILLED: 210 (202 as of last week)
• DRILLING: 159 (166)
• PERMITTED: 478 (479)
• PRODUCING: 2,345 (2,340)
• TOTAL: 3,192 (3,187)

Eight horizontal permits were issued during the week that ended Oct. 26, and 14 rigs were operating in the Utica Shale.

Newspaper: AEP retains drilling rights under new Ohio park – Chicago Tribune – Thousands of acres in eastern Ohio the state is buying to promote recreation and conservation may be drilled for oil and natural gas, an Ohio newspaper reported. A draft purchase agreement obtained by The Columbus Dispatch shows American Electric Power will retain subsurface rights to more than 31,000 acres it is selling to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for $47 million. The document states AEP will have continuing drilling rights. AEP spokesman Scott Blake said no active horizontal drilling known as fracking is underway on the land. He said the power company would work with the state to coordinate that activity if the situation changes. But Sarah Wickham, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Department, said the state is “reasonably certain” the property includes active wells. “However, we are still in the process of identifying the exact acres we are purchasing,” she said. “We will not be able to know specifically whether there are active wells on this property until survey and title work are completed.” The land is scheduled to be transferred in six installments beginning in March. The property is part of what could eventually make up a nearly 60,000-acre state park in four Appalachian counties: Morgan, Muskingum, Noble and Guernsey. Two earlier purchases and an option on another 18,500 acres comprise the rest. Former Gov. John Kasich announced the park in his 2018 State of the State address. It was named for Olympic star Jesse Owens in July 2018. The current governor, Mike DeWine, announced this latest purchase earlier this month. Damian Sikora, chief legal counsel and ethics officer at ODNR, said AEP has agreed to work with the state to make sure any future drilling is in a location that “won’t impact the recreation side of things or campgrounds or trails or things like that.”

Fracking legal on new parkland – The Daily Jeffersonian – The state’s planned $47 million purchase of more than 31,000 acres of land in eastern Ohio for recreation and conservation does not include the subsurface rights, and some of it likely will be the site of fracking activities, GateHouse Media Ohio has learned. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine – flanked by outdoorsmen and members of the General Assembly – announced the land purchase in eastern Ohio from American Electric Power a few weeks ago. The move was applauded by conservationists because the land, formerly used by the utility for strip mining, would be used by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for recreation and conservation and designated as a state park. The acquisition includes properties in Muskingum, Morgan, Noble, and Guernsey counties and will be acquired in parcels over the next two years. However, a draft of the purchase agreement obtained by GateHouse Media Ohio shows AEP will retain the subsurface rights to the land for potential oil and gas drilling. The draft states that AEP retains the “right to construct, install, and maintain well site locations, access roads, production equipment, pipeline systems, and utilities and to conduct seismic and geological surveys and the right to drill and extract from new water wells and reasonable use of non-domestic surface water for such purposes.” ODNR and AEP officials provided conflicting statements to GateHouse Media Ohio on whether there are already active wells on some of the land, but they agree that they will work together to coordinate any drilling activity. “We are reasonably certain there are active wells,” said Sarah Wickham, an ODNR spokeswoman. “However, we are still in the process of identifying the exact acres we are purchasing. We will not be able to know specifically whether there are active wells on this property until survey and title work are completed.”

Fracking Health Registry To Track The Effects Of Drilling In Ohio – WWNO public radio audio – The U.S. is a top producer of natural gas and crude oil, mostly due to the growth in fracking. But many people who live near fracking sites are concerned about possible health issues ⁠ – issues that aren’t being tracked by states or the federal government. In Ohio, residents have taken matters into their own hands and started their own fracking health registry, Julie Grant (@JulieIGrant) of The Allegheny Front reports.

How things got so fracking bad in Ohio – The fossil fuel industry and its proponents tout fracking’s economic benefits as this oil and gas extraction technique has led the march toward the nation’s energy independence. But as our understanding of the technique grows, so too does our knowledge of its many drawbacks. Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in Ohio, at the vanguard of the nation’s fracking boom thanks to the Utica and Marcellus shale reserves to the east of the state, which have sparked something of a fossil fuel industry feeding frenzy over the past decade. The amount of natural gas Ohio produces annually ballooned from 78 billion cubic feet in 2010 to nearly 1.8 trillion cubic feet in 2017 – an increase of more than 2,200 percent – according to federal figures. And what kind of impact has this had? Between 2007 and 2016, employment in Ohio’s shale industries grew 62 percent. Ten years on though, tough questions are being asked not just of the industry’s economic impact in Ohio’s poor Appalachian heartland, but also of the damage it’s causing to the environment, the climate and human health. “It’s impacting people locally,” “It’s impacting their health. It’s impacting regional health. It’s impacting local and regional economies in a negative way..” . The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own years-long study concluded that fracking operations have contaminated drinking water resources and have led to inadequately treated wastewater being dumped into surface water sources. Scientific and government research links fracking with an increased likelihood of earthquakes. In Ohio, some of the localized environmental impacts make for stark reading. A recent article in StateImpact Pennsylvania (part of an excellent series looking at the industry’s environmental footprint in Ohio and Pennsylvania) details complaints among residents living in close proximity to fracking infrastructure of things like gas leaks, drinking water contamination and discoloration, as well as fish kills. Cornell University found a possible link between exposure to gas drilling operations and cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs and cats in fracking states like Ohio.

CNX says it’s adjusting to low natural gas prices — CNX Resources continues to adjust to the low-price natural gas market but is generally optimistic about 2020, according to its third quarter earnings call.The Canonsburg-based natural gas exploration and production company said it expects to realize $25 million in savings from streamlining activities in the third quarter, including “reconfiguring” workflows and combining functions.The company confirmed in August it had laid off 70 employees – about 14% of its workforce.“Macro supply-and-demand concerns certainly lowered the forward strip during the past quarter, and we are adjusting activity accordingly by lowering our capital and production guidance for 2020,” President and CEO Nicholas J. DeIuliis said. During the third quarter, CNX used up to three horizontal rigs and drilled 15 wells. The company currently has two rigs in operation, which it expects to run into 2020, along with one fracking crew.The company also used three fracking crews to complete 20 wells, which included 14 Marcellus shale wells and six Utica shale wells. A completed well is one that has been drilled and fracked. CNX turned-in-line 24 wells in the third quarter, including 10 Marcellus wells in Greene County and three Utica wells in Greene County. A turned-in-line well is one that is producing natural gas.

Gulfport Energy wants to sell some Utica interests – Gulfport Energy is looking to sell some of its interests in the Utica Shale. The company announced the plan ahead of its Friday conference call with investors to discuss third-quarter earnings. Gulfport said proceeds from its sale of non-operated interests would offset higher-than-anticipated spending this year in the Utica. The company expected to have an agreement on the sale before the end of the year, according to a press release. Oklahoma City-based Gulfport lost $48.8 million, or 31 cents per diluted share during the quarter. The company’s average production was equivalent to 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Utica wells accounted for 80 percent of production. Gulfport has one drilling rig in the Utica Shale. During the third quarter, the company drilled two wells and began production on 16 wells in the Utica.

EQT cuts spending on natural gas drilling in 2019, 2020 – EQT Corp. trimmed more than $100 million from its capital budget for this year and will cut it by more than $500 million from its 2020 plan as it works to implement a highly choreographed system of natural gas drilling.The Pittsburgh-based natural gas driller, which was taken over by a new management team in early July led by Toby Z. Rice, on Thursday provided its first quarterly financial report that took place under the Rice tenure. It also provided a highly anticipated look at what’s going on near the drill bit in 2019 and what it plans in 2020. EQT, the country’s largest independent natural gas producer, is a bellwether for the Marcellus and Utica shale industries. Early indications see a continued down market for natural gas overall. EQT said it spent $475 million on capital, mostly land acquisition and drilling, and had cut by $115 million the amount of money it would spend in all of 2019. In January, the previous management team announced plans to spend between $1.9 billion and $2 billion for the full year. It has three rigs and three hydraulic fracturing crews and expects to have that through the end of the year. For next year, EQT said it would spend between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion, down $525 million from 2019’s plan. Also important for shareholders, who have been disappointed by EQT’s performance over the past year and a half, the company expected free cash flow between $200 million and $300 million as it would cut well costs and other capital by 25 percent. It also said it would cut down on its debt by $1.5 billion by the middle of 2020.

Local resident asks EPA to keep safeguards – Martins Ferry Times Leader – The Trump administration’s proposed methane rollbacks will cut essential safeguards to control volatile organic compounds and methane pollution from the oil and gas industry. These rollbacks would leave some infrastructure sites, including compressor stations and storage tanks located along interstate pipelines, free to emit unlimited amounts of cancer- causing air pollution. On Oct. 17, I traveled to Dallas, Texas, for the Environmental Protection Agency hearing and testified in opposition to Trump’s proposed methane rollbacks. I also listened to many others give their testimonies in opposition as well. This included a pediatrician who treats children with cancer. She stated that her patients were already suffering due to poor air quality from oil and gas pollution, and that the rollbacks would allow for greater releases of VOCs, which would have a very negative effect on children. An earth scientist and father who was there with his 5-year old son was in tears as he pleaded with the EPA to consider his son’s right to a healthy future in their decision-making. He also begged them not to not deny the science, which he said overwhelming proves that oil and gas production is a disaster for public health and our environment, contributing to the climate crisis at hand. My opposition testimony given at the EPA methane rollback hearing follows:

Partnership provides oil, gas training for high school seniors – Four hundred West Virginia high school seniors will be able to enter a pipeline of future workers in the oil and gas industry through a training program initiated by the West Virginia University Extension Service Safety and Health Extension.The SafeLandUSA orientation program will offer job-readiness training, online and hands-on ATV safety course, and medical-response training in high schools and vocational and technical schools across the state.“Most high school graduates entering college or going directly into the workforce have little, if any, knowledge about safety and health considerations in this industry,” Tiffany Rice, adjunct instructor for WVU Extension Service Safety and Health Extension, said.“As the oil and natural gas industry continues to provide job opportunities for young adults, we want to ensure that those workers are aware of, and able to safely handle, serious hazards that can accompany those jobs.”Diversified Gas & Oil Corporation has launched this program with a lead $25,000 sponsorship. Concentrated in the Appalachian Basin, Diversified Gas & Oil is an established, independent owner and operator of producing natural gas and oil wells, as well as natural gas pipelines and compression stations. “By partnering with WVU Extension Service to offer programs such as these, we are able to give back to the state by helping high school students succeed through education and job readiness,” Hutson said. “This training program will help build a strong pipeline of educated, skilled future workers for the oil and gas industry.”

Pennsylvania High Court to Review Fracking Suit Against Anadarko – Pennsylvania’s top court will take up an enforcement lawsuit claiming Anadarko Petroleum Corp. misled property owners in the state about the value of the fracking rights it leased from them. The suit accuses Anadarko of violating Pennsylvania’s unfair trade practices law by using those deceptive tactics to drive down mineral royalties to property owners living above the Marcellus Shale, an underground natural gas formation that covers much of the state. Anadarko also illegally divvied up the Marcellus Shale with rival Chesapeake Energy Corp., the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office claims. A state appeals court let part of the case move…

Public Health Experts Flunk Report Tying Pennsylvania Air Quality Improvements to Gas Drilling | DeSmog – America’s air seems to have taken a turn for the worse, according to recent scientific research. Last week, a nationwide study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) found that the country’s air quality deteriorated in 2017 and 2018 – a dramatic reversal of improvements recorded over the prior seven years. Today, the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) – an organization funded by oil and gas producers – released their own report that presents a different narrative about energy production and air quality in Pennsylvania, a state that’s become one of the nation’s largest producers of fossil fuels. CEA’s report first points to a drop in some types of air pollution in Pennsylvania between 1990 and 2016 and next to a rise in natural gas production in the state from 2010 to 2018.But a look at the data presented inside that report – a two-page infographic drawing on data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration – shows that connecting more drilling to less pollution is deeply misleading, public health experts said. “Pennsylvania’s emissions fell 92 percent as energy production soared by almost 3,000 percent,” a statement released with the report by CEA announced. Some Pennsylvania politicians hailed the findings. “As the CEA’s report underscores, we do not have to choose between a cleaner environment and a strong economy that requires more energy,” state senator Camera Bartolotta said in a statement released by CEA. “Pennsylvania is among the nation’s leaders in emissions reductions, while our natural gas industry is producing at record levels.” Carnegie Mellon’s study was widely seen as an indictment of the Trump administration’s well-documented resistance to enforcing environmental laws and regulations, suggesting that a hands-off approach to industry may have had an immediate and measurable impact on the quality of American air. It also suggested some of the deadliest impacts from California’s wildfires, made worse in recent years by the country’s history of failing to prevent climate-changing industrial emissions, may be the effects of the fumes on people’s health. In addition, the CMU researchers specifically highlighted the dangers of oil and gas pollution. “The research identified recent increases in driving and the burning of natural gas as likely contributors to the uptick in unhealthy air, even as coal use and related pollution have declined,” the New York Times reported. That 92 percent drop? It refers to one air pollutant out of the seven: sulfur dioxide, best known for its role in causing acid rain. The year CEA’s report starts its clock, 1990, is also the year that the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments were signed into law. Many of the provisions in those amendments specifically targeted sulfur dioxide and acid rain.

Bill Peduto says no additional petrochemical plants should come to Western Pa. – Today at the Climate Action Summit, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto announced his opposition to any additional petrochemical cracker plants that have been rumored for the Western Pennsylvania region. The region’s first cracker plant is currently being constructed in Beaver County by oil giant Shell. Cracker plants refine natural-gas into plastic pellets. The Shell cracker will likely be fueled by natural-gas fracked in the Southwestern Pennsylvania region.Since its construction, other oil and gas companies have been eyeing potential cracker plants in the Ohio River Valley, including ExxonMobil. Business interests have been hinting at the potential of four cracker plants in this region. Today, the summit at the David Lawrence convention center in Downtown marks the first time Peduto has publicly stated opposition to such plans. He also added in his speech at the summit, that he plans to send a formal letter to Gov. Tom Wolf (D-York) sharing his opposition. Wolf has been a proponent of the Beaver County cracker plant.“I oppose any additional petrochemical companies coming to Western Pennsylvania,” said Peduto to the crowd, according to Pittsburgh Business Times reporter Paul Gough. “We don’t have to become the petrochemical/plastics center of the United States.”Last year, environmental activists pressured Peduto to issue a statement about the Beaver County cracker plant. Peduto didn’t weigh in on that plant, which is already in construction, but activists are taking his statement as a win for their cause.The Beaver County cracker plant has been permitted to emit 2.2 million tons ofcarbon dioxide, the equivalent of adding more than 480,000 cars to the region. Also, natural-gas production often creates large emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet 86 times as much as carbon dioxide, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

’Pittsburgh isn’t in Beaver County:’ County officials disheartened by Pittsburgh mayor’s dismissal of petrochemical development – – Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto caught ire from Beaver County officials after he denounced the idea of a second petrochemical plant in western Pennsylvania. Beaver County officials called Peduto’s remarks against any additional petrochemical development in western Pennsylvania reckless, disheartening and irrational. The petrochemical industry might not be welcome in Pittsburgh, but Beaver County is open for business. County officials were outraged after Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto publicly opposed the expansion of western Pennsylvania’s petrochemical industry during the Climate Action Summit in downtown Pittsburgh. “Let me be the first politician to say publicly, I oppose any additional petrochemical companies coming to western Pennsylvania,” he told a crowd of climate activists and environmentalists at the summit, hosted by p4 Pittsburgh, The Heinz Endowments and Sustainable Pittsburgh. “We do not have to become the petrochemical/plastics center of the United States.” Those comments didn’t sit well with Beaver County’s Board of Commissioners. “Mayor Peduto may represent the city of Pittsburgh, but he does not represent the remainder of this region,” Commissioner Chairman Daniel Camp said in a statement, noting he was surprised and very disheartened by the comments. “Let me be clear when I say: Beaver County is open for business and will continue to encourage and welcome the responsible production of energy in our region, which is vital to our workforce. While the Mayor is fighting against the hardworking people in our union halls and in our building trades, I want them to know that they will always have a friend in Beaver County.” Although the mayor didn’t name Shell Chemicals’ ethane cracker plant under construction in Potter Township, it’s clear his remarks were directed at similar facilities. ExxonMobil is considering a number of locations, including Beaver County, to expand its plastics manufacturing right now; company brokers recently visited the county to renew ongoing talks. And they should continue to consider Beaver County, Commissioner Sandie Egley said. She too was outraged by Peduto’s stance. “I am shocked by the reckless and irrational statement by the mayor today that he opposes any additional petrochemical companies coming to western Pennsylvania,” Egley said. “The mayor does not speak for western Pennsylvania and he most certainly does not speak for Beaver County.”

Debunking the 5 Myths of the Mariner East pipeline – Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes is set to hear testimony directly from citizens regarding potential dangers and the lack of a sufficient emergency notification system or management plan in the event of a pipeline-related disaster. Meanwhile, Sunoco/ET is again attempting to silence residents by trying to block their testimony and derail the hearing. Their lawyers even submitted a motion contending that only experts (often on their payroll), not ordinary citizens, should be able to testify. Here are five myths that Baker and the natural gas lobby attempt to propagate about Mariner East 2. Expect to hear them at this week’s hearing and in the future:

• Myth 1: Mariner East transports energy and will help make Pennsylvania and American energy independent. The truth is Mariner East is not keeping your lights on or heating your house. It is carrying hazardous natural gas liquids to be transported to Europe for plastic manufacturing. That’s right – millions of single-use plastic products.
• Myth 2: The Mariner East pipeline project is the safest way to transport natural gas liquids. Yes, pipelines are safer than truck or rail. But you know what’s even safer? A pipeline that is properly planned, that doesn’t run through high-density communities, that hasn’t been beset with geological problems and instability concerns, that isn’t made up of cobbled together pieces of 80-year-old and new segments, and that has automatic shut-off valves and other safety mechanisms. And yes, an emergency notification system and actual management plan would help, too.
• Myth 3: Increased pipeline safety will jeopardize Mariner East jobs and its economic impact. The idea that a pipeline can’t be both safe and an economic boon is just plain wrong. Increased oversight and safety should lead to more jobs. Judge Barnes said as much in her order last May in the complaint I brought before the PUC: “Safety and proper engineering design benefits workers and families which reside along the pipeline … If the pipelines can be built in a safe manner, then that benefits all.”
• Myth 4: Senator Dinniman wrongly challenged Mariner East in his case before the PUC. Judge Barnes granted me legislative standing in a May 21, 2018, interim order. It should also be noted that multiple local government officials have used public resources regarding the need for increased oversight of and safety on Mariner East, including the Chester County Commissioners, who are suing Sunoco/ET, the Chester County District Attorney, who is filing a civil nuisance action against the company, and Delaware County Council, which spent $115,000 on a risk assessment of the project, not to mention other state legislators, schools boards, and townships.
• Myth 5: Senator Dinniman is the ringleader of the fight against Mariner East. The movement against Mariner East is powered by a growing number of residents, many of whom have had their homes and lives negatively impacted by it. Yes, I represent my constituents, but they don’t take their cues from me. Anyone who thinks otherwise is grossly underestimating them. And at the end of the day, Sunoco/ET, itself, created the backlash against Mariner East by driving entire communities against the project through carelessness, callousness, and arrogance.

These are the mistruths, falsehoods, and outright lies that Sunoco/ET and its mouthpieces, like Baker, are rolling out in a desperate attempt to spin Mariner East’s abysmal safety and environmental record. My message to them is simple: focus on fixing the ongoing problems with Mariner East (including, most recently another reported sinkhole and damage to an aquifer) and addressing our extensive and well-documented safety and environmental concerns, instead of waging a failing public relations campaign. Sure, you can try, but you won’t silence me and you won’t silence the people.

DEP, Equitrans agree to $650,000 settlement over storage field violations – The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced a $650,000 settlement with a natural gas storage operator for violations at an underground gas reservoir that sits beneath a planned coal mine in Greene County. The Swarts storage field is an old, depleted oil and gas formation that lies less than 2,000 beneath what will soon be an active part of a coal mine. Equitrans Midstream Corporation pumps pressurized gas into the field to store it for later delivery. Consol plans to extend the Harvey Mine into the area above the Swarts Field, in Morris and Washington townships, later this year. Under state law, operators of oil and gas storage fields that lie within 2,000 feet of a coal mine must submit maps of all wells into the site and plug or recondition some wells, to prevent gas from escaping the field. According to the Consent Order and Agreement signed by the DEP and Equitrans, the company failed to submit complete reports on gas wells into the site. As part of the agreement, Equitrans will identify all remaining wells in the storage field and plug any that it needs to under state law. In 2013, Consol told EQT, the predecessor to Equitrans, that it would be extending the Harvey Mine into the area, according to the agreement. EQT submitted reports to the state on wells in the area over the next few years, but in 2018 the Department issued an order to the company – by then Equitrans – for failing to submit timely or complete reports identifying all wells on site. The DEP had threatened to shut down the storage field if the company did not comply with the order. .

Philly refinery fire shows why EPA must not cut regulations, say 13 attorneys general, including Pa., N.J. – Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and 12 other state attorneys general sent a letter Monday to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urging it to scrap a proposed rollback of an accident prevention rule in light of the most recent revelation about the blast at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery earlier this year. The explosion released two tons of potentially deadly hydrofluoric acid, according to a U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) report released Oct. 16. The blast also hurled metal shrapnel the size of a bus across the Schuylkill. In addition to Shapiro, the attorneys general of New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington signed off on the letter, which will be entered as part of a continuing objection to an EPA proposal to loosen a program designed to reduce accidents. The attorneys general want the CSB report submitted as part of that objection.Representatives for the EPA could not be reached immediately for comment.The June 21 refinery explosion and fire released 5,239 pounds of hydrofluoric acid and began with the failure of an elbow in a corroded section of pipe. The CSB said the fire triggered three explosions, one of which blew a fuel tank into projectiles, including one weighing 19 tons that traveled 2,100 feet and landed on the opposite bank of the river. The incident occurred in the early morning when few people were around and caused no serious injuries, though five workers required treatment at the scene.

‘This Is Not Normal.’ New Air Monitoring Reveals Hazards in This Maine City. – It’s been seven months since my fellow South Portland residents and I first learned we had a problem here: the petroleum storage tanks sprinkled across the city and the ships delivering millions of gallons of asphalt and fuel into the harbor may be making our air toxic. The upset started with the release of a draft consent decree – a settlement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Global Partners, an energy supply company that owns some of the tanks here. With the filing of that document, the city learned that Global had been violating the Clean Air Act and that its tanks containing asphalt and bunker fuel had the potential to emit twice the amount of dangerous chemicals – called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs – as their permit allowed. Fear ricocheted throughout the community as it was revealed that a second company, Sprague, appeared to have the same problem, and as people realized that the noxious smells that sometimes filled the air in South Portland could contain toxins that can cause cancer or asthma attacks. For months, the city and activists solicited public comments to ask the EPA to strengthen its settlement with Global Partners, and the city and state launched an air monitoring program to get to the bottom of what’s in South Portland’s air. I’ve spent the last 24 hours staring at a spreadsheet full of the latest air quality monitoring data that show frequent spikes of benzene, a known carcinogen, and another toxic substance that could be even more problematic. This is the second data dump from the state, and it includes data from sampling canisters distributed to residents and a few permanent air monitoring sites. Danielle Twomey, an environmental chemist for the state of Maine, has spent the last few months analyzing samples from South Portland. This latest round of data has her alarmed. These are the kinds of results that might cause some state employees to keep their heads down and out of the firing line. That’s not Twomey’s style. “I’ve seen more now and the more I see, it’s like … oh wow,” she says. “My gut says this doesn’t look good,” she tells me. “This is not normal. This is not the background that we expect to see in the city.” Like the first round of data, the new data show occasional spikes in benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, as well as naphthalene, a pollutant that is toxic at far lower levels, making it trickier to test for and analyze, and more problematic.

Massachusetts launches investigation into gas disaster (AP) – Massachusetts officials are opening their own investigation into last September’s Merrimack Valley natural gas disaster.More than 100 structures were damaged in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover in the Sept. 13, 2018, fires and explosions. One person died and dozens were injured. Matthew Nelson, chair of the state Department of Public Utilities, said Friday his agency will look into the cause as well as the response. He said the investigation would take at least a year and could lead to penalties against Columbia Gas. Nelson made the announcement during a forum in Lawrence focused on the National Transportation Safety Board’s recently completed investigation. The agency concluded Columbia Gas poorly planned a pipeline replacement project and responded inadequately to the disaster.

Raimondo, McKee to push tougher utility regs after report blames National Grid, Enbridge for loss of heat on Aquidneck Island – Rhode Island leaders are pushing for stricter utility regulations in the wake of an investigative report by state regulators that found a litany of failings and poor decisions by natural gas supplier National Grid and pipeline company Enbridge helped cause a widespread loss of heat on Aquidneck Island last winter.Gov. Gina Raimondo said that, after trying unsuccessfully immediately after the crisis, she would again call on the General Assembly to pass legislation when it reconvenes in January that would give regulators the ability to fine National Grid if it fails to meet emergency-preparedness and response standards.“Nine months ago, I asked the legislature for legislation that would put more teeth into the [Division of Public Utilities and Carriers],” she said in an interview. “I don’t know why the legislature didn’t do that. They stood with National Grid and they didn’t stand with Rhode Islanders.” Lt. Gov. Daniel McKee, whose office introduced the bill in 2018 and again this past session, said it would do so again next year. He said in a statement that he hopes the 74-page report released by the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers on Wednesday strengthens the case for reform.

Climate change v. Killingly gas power plant. And the winner is … When the plan to build a natural gas power plant in Killingly first came up in 2016, the objections from folks in this northeast corner town of about 17,000 were pretty basic – they already had one, didn’t want another about a mile away, and didn’t want its emissions. “Not another power plant,” was the rallying cry. Three years later, this remains the name of the local opposition group – or NAPP for short. But since then, the furor over the proposed Killingly Energy Center (KEC) has expanded into a statewide environmental cause célèbre and is now something of a poster child for how not to tackle climate change. Those critical of the plan point out that a fossil fuel-run power plant that still emits greenhouse gases, even if it produces fewer of them than oil or coal plants, will not allow the state to meet a 2040 target of 100% zero carbon for the elector sector suggested by Gov. Ned Lamont last month. With this as their argument, environmental advocates have ramped up their opposition to KEC. For the last several months, members of the Sierra Club and other groups have protested every Friday outside the governor’s residence, while NAPP has held protests on Saturdays in Killingly. Advocates have also blasted the governor’s office and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes with emails and calls opposing the plant.

Firm revokes application to build pipeline, but will refile (AP) – It will be a while longer before a hotly contested natural gas pipeline gets a yes-or-no decision from New Jersey environmental regulators. An Oklahoma company on Friday withdrew permit applications with New Jersey regulators that it needs to build a pipeline from Pennsylvania through New Jersey and into New York. But Tulsa-based Williams Companies said it will refile the applications in the next few days. The company’s Northeast Supply Enhancement Project would expand the existing Transco pipeline infrastructure in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. It said in a statement it acted to give the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection additional time to review the project. It also still needs permits from New York authorities. The DEP said Williams withdrew three applications, but left a fourth pending with the agency. “Williams remains committed to installing this much-needed energy infrastructure in an environmentally responsible manner and in compliance with the states’ high environmental standards,” the company said. A spokesman said Williams cannot speculate when it might receive a decision from the New Jersey DEP, but the company wanted to have the pipeline operating by the winter 2020 heating season. Williams had planned to spend $926 million on the project, saying it is needed to ensure adequate heating and energy supplies to New York City and Long Island, and that it can be built safely with minimal environmental disruption. Environmental groups and other opponents say the project would stir up tons of highly polluted sediment and reverse decades of hard-won environmental improvements in Raritan Bay, which has been struggling with pollution. They also oppose projects that would facilitate the burning of additional fossil fuels.

LG&E Sues State, Threatens Conservation In Bernheim Pipeline Battle – When the state of Kentucky pays to conserve natural areas, it tries to protect that land forever. Now for first time in nearly 30 years, the power of those protections could be tested in the fight over the future of Bernheim Forest’s Cedar Grove wildlife corridor, according to state environmental advocates. In Louisville Gas and Electric’s pursuit to build a natural gas pipeline through Bernheim Forest, the private utility is using eminent domain to try and seize land from Bernheim, a private nonprofit. But LG&E isn’t just suing Bernheim and other holdout landowners. It also filed suit in September against a state board, seeking to break the conservation easement on Bernheim property. The easement restricts development, like pipelines, and also requires Bernheim to manage the habitat for imperiled species. Kentucky environmentalists say it is the first time a utility has attempted to overturn a conservation easement held by the state, and it could result in weakening protections for natural areas in the rest of the state. “There’s never been an effort to terminate one of those easements,” said Don Dott, president of the Kentucky Land Trusts Coalition. “So this is new and this is potentially a very bad precedent.” LG&E said in a statement provided by spokesperson Liz Pratt that a conservation easement “does not prevent the exercise of eminent domain.”

Enbridge to install cameras, warning systems in Straits of Mackinac – – Ships traversing the Straits of Mackinac may soon get a warning message before they cross: Hoist your anchors. Enbridge Energy is awaiting federal approval to implement a warning system that will notify ships of the U.S. Coast Guard’s no-anchor zone in the Straits, where Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and gas pipeline lies on the lakebottom. Officials from the Canadian energy company expect they’ll get approval for the system from the Coast Guard and Federal Communications Commission before the end of 2019. The system was one of three measures Enbridge leadership recently announced to monitor and deter further anchor strikes on Line 5, like the one April 1, 2018, that marred and dented the 66-year-old pipeline and ruptured another company’s defunct utility line. Though Enbridge officials said the strike didn’t compromise the integrity of its twin pipelines, it renewed concerns from environmentalists, activists and others that the aging pipeline threatens an oil spill in the Great Lakes. Ultimately, Enbridge wants to mitigate anchor strike risks by encasing Line 5 in a $500 million utility tunnel underneath the Straits. The deal they reached with former Gov. Rick Snyder to pay for and construct the tunnel is currently halted and the subject of a court battle between Enbridge and the state.

Mackinac Straits tunnel equals safety and jobs – Since 2016, I have advocated building a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac. Think like the Chunnel, the 31.5-mile tunnel under the English Channel that connects England and France. People are likely riding through it as you read this, safely, quickly and without disruption to the waters above. A Mackinac Straits tunnel would connect our Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula and be much shorter at only four miles long. Instead of transporting people, it would serve as a utility tunnel containing a new energy pipeline to transport energy for Michigan’s family and business needs. A tunnel is the solution that both protects our environment and your budget. Here are just a few reasons why: Safeguarding the Great Lakes. The Line 5 pipeline today rests on the floor of the Great Lakes near the convergence of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. While the pipeline has safely satisfied our energy needs for decades, an MST would be beneath the floor of the Straits by utilizing 21st century technology to fulfill Michigan’s ecological responsibility to protect Great Lakes waters. Providing affordable propane to heat Michigan’s homes and small businesses. 55% of Michigan’s propane arrives via Line 5 (including 65% of the Upper Peninsula’s), which is how many families heat their homes during Michigan’s winter wonderland months. Abruptly closing Line 5 and canceling the tunnel infrastructure project, without an affordable alternative energy supply for consumers, means lower thermostats and higher heating bills. The result would be like imposing a “heating tax” on our fellow Michiganians. Building an MST would continue to permit affordable propane to be piped into our state to heat homes and businesses.Michigan energy production and jobs. The oil and gas production industry in Michigan provides thousands of direct and in-direct jobs that create a significant positive economic impact. An MST would continue to provide Michigan energy producers a competitive means to get their product to market. Shutting down Line 5, with no clear alternative, would mean Michigan energy production could grind to a halt, put people out of work and hurt our economy.

Court rules in favor of Enbridge in Line 5 tunnel fight – Legislation approved under former Gov. Rick Snyder to allow for construction of a tunnel to house a new Enbridge Line 5 crude oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac is constitutional, the Court of Claims ruled Thursday. The ruling by Judge Michael Kelly overturns an opinion by Attorney General Dana Nessel and is also a setback for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has ordered state agencies to stop work on approvals and other actions related to the tunnel. Nessel and Whitmer both said they will appeal the ruling. “The state of Michigan will not rely on a foreign corporation to protect and preserve our state’s most precious resource, its Great Lakes,” Nessel said in reference to Enbridge, a Canadian oil giant. Opponents of the tunnel say there is too great a risk of a catastrophic oil spill in the environmentally sensitive straits during the several years it would take to build the $500-million tunnel, at Enbridge’s Proponents of the tunnel say it is the safest way to get the pipeline out of the water while ensuring delivery of propane, used for home heating, to the Upper Peninsula, and crude oil to refineries in Detroit and northern Ohio. Nessel issued an opinion in March that said the tunnel legislation violates the Michigan constitution because it did not have a single purpose described in its title, as the constitution requires.

Michigan judge clears way for Enbridge Line 5 – – A state judge on Thursday handed Enbridge Energy a victory in its quest to build a tunnel around its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac. Michigan Court of Claims Judge Michael J. Kelly ruled that the Republican-led Legislature did not violate the Constitution when it enacted a 2018 law creating an authority to oversee and operate the tunnel. The ruling sides with the Canadian pipeline giant in its request to uphold a series of agreements made last year with Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to replace the Straits pipelines and bury new lines in a bedrock tunnel expected to cost Enbridge $500 million. It comes as Attorney General Dana Nessel is separately suing to shutdown the pipeline. The ruling could pave the way for that project to proceed, but Nessel vowed to appeal. “The State of Michigan will not rely on a foreign corporation to protect and preserve our state’s most precious resource, its Great Lakes,” she said in a statement Thursday.In the same statement, Nessel accused Enbridge of misrepresenting its financial holdings when entering the tunnel deal with Snyder’s administration – an issue that concerns whether the company would cover the cost of a potential oil spill. Nessel released a 120-page report her office commissioned on the issue.Enbridge sued the state earlier this year after Democatic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer – Snyder’s successor – halted work on the tunnel plan in late March. Whitmer’s move came after Nessel, in a legal opinion, found the law creating a tunnel oversight board unconstitutional. Both Nessel and Whitmer campaigned on shutting down the pipeline, and they opposed the deal with the Snyder administration that was finalized during his final days in office.

Enbridge and its controversial Line 3 pipeline targets of hoax – – A group calling itself the Indigenous Pipeline Council carried out an extensive hoax over the weekend, holding a news conference about bringing an oil pipeline through Duluth only to send a news release posing as Enbridge condemning the proposal.”It’s completely fake. It’s a hoax,” Enbridge spokeswoman Juli Kellner said. “They sent a fake news release from Enbridge, they sent a fake news release from themselves.”On Saturday, two members of the group calling themselves Carl Iron Eyes and Coyote Mick Tomi – actually indigenous activists Gitz Crazyboy and Tito Ybarra – held a news conference in Duluth announcing a pipeline route that “cuts a jagged but efficient path through golf courses, cemeteries and neighborhoods” in an apparent protest of the Line 3 pipeline.”It ensures that those who share in the wealth from oil production and transport also share in the risk,” said Tomi.He and Iron Eyes, wearing suits and ties with American flags on their shirts, gave a deadpan delivery of their tongue-in-cheek proposal, according to a video of the event. “The IPC has a program to relocate residents to a beautiful parcel of land on the other side of Morgan Park, with free medical services and ample leisure opportunities,” Iron Eyes said. Enbridge is long finished with the short Wisconsin portion of its $2.6 billion Line 3 replacement pipeline. The Minnesota portion still needs regulatory approvals.MoreWhen reached by the Star Tribune on Monday, the pair did not break character and said they had already “successfully and respectfully removed some remains” in the fake project’s right of way. Monday night, prank organizers the Yes Men came clean with their role in the stunt alongside groups Honor the Earth and Stop Line 3. “It’s hard to imagine that a pipeline as bad as the IPC’s could exist, but it’s actually close to the truth, just in reverse,” said Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth. The actual proposed Line 3 replacement would travel 330 miles across Minnesota, bringing 760,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to in Superior, Wis.

Senate committee gives nod to bipartisan felony trespassing bill — A Senate committee has approved bipartisan legislation that would make it a felony to trespass on land associated with oil or gas companies and pipelines.The Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety on Tuesday approved the bill 4-1 with Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, opposed. It now heads to the full Senate. A version of the bill already passed the Assembly.Supporters say the bill is designed to protect critical infrastructure and utility workers, while also guarding the right to protest, but more than 20 environmental groups – including Midwest Environmental Advocates, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council and the Wisconsin chapter of the Sierra Club – have opposed the bill, arguing it would silence groups that protest pipeline projects. The bill would expand existing protections already granted in state law to electric utility companies to also include gas or oil companies and their pipelines, water utilities and other energy generation, storage and transportation systems.

Appeals court hears dispute over pipeline compressor station (AP) – Lawyers for opponents of a natural gas compressor station proposed in a historic African American community in Virginia told a federal appeals court Tuesday that the state has failed to carefully consider the potential health impacts of the station and “unequal treatment” of the people who live near it. A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments from opponents who want to overturn a permit granted by the State Air Pollution Control Board for developers of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to build a compressor station in Union Hill, an unincorporated community that was founded by freed slaves after the Civil War. Opponents are concerned that exhaust from the station could cause harmful health effects on nearby residents. The judges peppered lawyers for the board and Dominion Energy about whether the state carefully examined the potential health impacts on Union Hill residents. David Neal, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, urged the board to throw out the permit. Neal said the state Department of Environmental Quality refused to consider using electric motors for the compressor station, an alternative technology he said would greatly reduce or eliminate emissions from the station. Jon Mueller, an attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said it is the responsibility of the board to protect the approximately 200 residents – mostly African Americans – who live near the compressor station site from harmful emissions and from “unequal treatment.” He said many of the residents have pre-existing health conditions that could be exacerbated by emissions from the station.

Legislative committee wants Cooper, top aides to testify at oversight hearing (WBTV) – A legislative committee investigating the circumstances by which the administration of Governor Roy Cooper approved a key permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline last year has asked that Cooper appear before the committee to answer questions. The request came in a letter from North Carolina Senator Harry Brown (R-Onslow) and Representative Dean Arp (R-Union), who co-chair the subcommittee of the Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations that was formed to investigate the ACP matter. In a bipartisan vote of the subcommittee’s members last December, lawmakers voted to hire an outside investigative firm to conduct the probe into whether approval of the key ACP permit was tied to a separate deal being negotiated between the solar industry and Duke Energy, a major investor in the pipeline. A WBTV investigation has previously found a link between the pipeline permit and the solar deal, which Cooper and his staff have denied. More recently, lawmakers have indicated their desire to have Cooper and staff testify before the subcommittee prior to a final report being issued detailing the investigation’s findings.Cooper and his staff have previously said they would not testify without first knowing what information investigators had uncovered.

Coast Guard, Virginia agencies monitoring oil spill possibly moving towards Outlook Beach in Hampton – Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads pollution responders are investigating a sheen that was reported Monday, near Outlook Beach. “The spilled material is most likely a petroleum product, likely oil or fuel from with an unidentified source,” said Lt Mitchell Latta, Chief of the Incident Management Division, from Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads. “We are working closely with state and local representatives on the response and believe this is not an on-going spill.” Reports say that an oil spill is believed to have originated at the mouth of the James River has made its way toward Outlook Beach at Fort Monroe. However, the source and amount of the spill are unknown. Out of an abundance of caution, the Coast Guard has opened the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to pay for any necessary response efforts. The Coast Guard has taken a sample of the product, investigated the spill by helicopter and is searching for the source of the product along with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The Coast Guard has also been coordinating response efforts with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, Fort Monroe Authority and the City of Hampton. The City of Hampton will keep Outlook Beach closed while cleanup and spill investigation continue. There has been no observable impact to wildlife, reports say.

Outlook Beach in Hampton is closed due to oil spill – (WAVY) – Officials in Hampton have closed Outlook Beach until further notice as they investigate an oil spill. The spill, which may have originated at the mouth of the James River, made its way toward Ft. Monroe Sunday, according to officials. Officials believe the oil may be moving towards Buckroe Beach. Multiple agencies, including the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, Department of Environmental Quality, Ft. Monroe Authority, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard are monitoring the spill.

U.S. Coast Guard responds to three spills – The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to an oil sheen in Breton Sound, Block 37, Louisiana. It is just one of three spill responses underway on Monday. The three-mile by 10-mile sheen originated from a damaged and inactive wellhead owned by Texas Petroleum Investment Company (TPIC). Currently, the well is intermittently discharging a mixture of oil, water and mud. The cause of the damage to the wellhead is unconfirmed and is currently under investigation.TPIC has assumed control of the spill as the responsible party contracted. OMI Environmental Solutions, American Pollution Control Corporation and Clean Gulf Associates are cleaning up the spill. Seven response boats from OMI Environmental Solutions and Clean Gulf Associates are on-scene conducting containment and recovery operations, with 84 gallons of oily water mixture reportedly recovered so far. 5,000 feet of boom has been deployed on the northwest corner and south of Breton Island. . Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads pollution responders are investigating a sheen that was reported on Monday, near Outlook Beach in Hampton, Virginia. “The spilled material is most likely a petroleum product, likely oil or fuel from with an unidentified source,” said Lt Mitchell Latta, Chief of the Incident Management Division from Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads. “We are working closely with state and local representatives on the response and believe this is not an on-going spill.”The source and amount of the spill are unknown. The Coast Guard is responding to a crude oil discharge in Pass A Loutre Wildlife Management Area, Louisiana, where crude oil is leaking from a storage tank owned by Whitney Oil and Gas.The maximum potential for the spill was estimated to be 2,520 gallons, but the discharge was contained before all the contents of the tank entered the water.Currently, there is three hundred feet of containment boom, one oil skimmer and two oil spill response boats on scene. OMI Environmental Solutions has been contracted as the Oil Spill Response Organization to clean up the spill.

Battle to protect Florida coast from offshore drilling continues – The fight to protect Florida’s Gulf Coast from offshore oil and gas drilling is far from over. That was the update delivered on Oct. 28 during a presentation at the Sanibel and Captiva Islands Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Business After Hours, held in partnership with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and Oceana – an international advocacy organization focused on ocean conservation that is leading a national campaign to prevent the expansion of offshore oil drilling. “Florida is still at risk,” Oceana Offshore Drilling Campaign Director Diane Hoskins said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) develops the Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program) for oil and gas development. The program establishes a five-year schedule of oil and gas lease sales proposed for the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, and BOEM currently is working under the approved 2017-2022 program. In 2017, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13795 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke issued Secretarial Order 3350. As a result, BOEM is in the process of developing a new National OCS Program for 2019-2024. If approved, the draft program will supersede the 2017-2022 program. Hoskins reported that the draft proposes opening nearly all U.S. waters to offshore drilling. More than 370 municipalities and over 2,200 elected local, state and federal officials have formally opposed offshore oil and gas drilling – plus seismic air gun blasting – including more than 270 on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Both Republicans and Democrats, governors on the East and West coasts have expressed concern or opposition to expanded oil and gas exploration, development and production off their coasts, according to Oceana. “Political parties aside,” she said, “both aisles of coastal communities oppose offshore drilling.”

Hess Hits Oil Pay Near Tubular Bells – Hess Corp. Tuesday reported an oil discovery at the Esox-1 exploration well, located in Mississippi Canyon Block 726 in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM).Drilled in 4,609 feet (1,405 meters) of water, Esox-1 encountered approximately 191 net feet (58) of high-quality oil-bearing Miocene reservoirs, operator Hess noted in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. The discovery is located approximately six miles (10 kilometers) east of the Tubular Bells production facilities, and Hess stated the plan is to tie it back to the Tubular Bells infrastructure. Hess holds a 57.14-percent stake in Esox. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. owns the remaining 42.86-percent interest.

Oil Drillers Get $18B Break Thanks to Old Law— The U.S. has forfeited some $18 billion tied to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico since 2000 because of a decades-old law that gave energy companies a break on paying royalties when drilling in deep waters, federal investigators concluded Thursday. The foregone revenue will keep climbing, as energy companies continue to harvest oil and gas royalty-free from dozens of affected tracts in the Gulf, long after lawmakers realized sloppy legislative writing prevented the government from making the price breaks temporary. The dynamic is providing “corporate welfare at taxpayer expense,” said Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva, the head of the House Natural Resources Committee who requested the Government Accountability Office report. At issue is a 1995 law Congress passed to spur deep-water drilling by waiving royalty payments that energy companies must make to the federal government for oil and gas extracted from federal waters. Some lawmakers said they aimed to make that royalty relief temporary if oil and gas prices or production jumped above certain levels. But specific price thresholds didn’t make it into the statute or the lease contracts issued by the Clinton administration in 1998 and 1999. And in 2007, a federal court ruled the Interior Department couldn’t force companies to pay royalties on production from even more deep-water leases inked between 1996 and 2000, saying they were barred by that federal law. If Congress intended to impose price thresholds on royalty relief, an appeals court later said, “it certainly knew how to do so.” The misstep is benefiting a slew of oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Equinor Gulf of Mexico LLC, Chevron USA Inc. and Eni Petroleum US LLC, according to lease data reviewed by Bloomberg. Oil industry advocates leaned on the 2007 court ruling affirming the royalty relief program. “The courts have ruled there was nothing ambiguous about the 1995 act,” said Ben Marter, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute. “Those who would require the companies that took Congress at its word to now pay royalties retroactively are engaging in a dangerous game of bait-and-switch.”

In parts of Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley,’ toxic emissions set to rise with a raft of new plants – Over a half-century, Hazel Schexnayder saw her riverside hamlet of St. Gabriel transformed from a collection of old plantations, tin-roofed shacks and verdant cornfields into an industrial juggernaut. By the early 1990s, she’d had enough of the towering chemical plants and their mysterious white plumes, the roadside ditches oozing with blue fluid, the air that smelled of rotten eggs and nail-polish remover, the neighbors suffering miscarriages and dying of cancer. “We were inundated with plants,” Schexnayder, now 87, said. “We didn’t need any more around here.” She and others began pushing back in 1993, and the following year, residents voted to turn their corner of unincorporated Iberville Parish into the city of St. Gabriel. They wanted sidewalks and other amenities, but more than that, they wanted some say over the chemical plants popping up in their backyards. While the newly created city was able to keep new plants out, the petrochemical pileup continued unabated beyond St. Gabriel’s borders. “I bet you money there are 20 plants right now just around St. Gabriel,” Schexnayder said, nearly twice as many as there were when the incorporation drive began.She’s not even close. There are now 30 large petrochemical plants within 10 miles of her house, most of them outside the city limits. Thirteen are within a 3-mile radius of her home. The nearest facility, only a mile away, is the world’s largest manufacturer of polystyrene, commonly known as Styrofoam. Stories of fed-up Louisianans like Schexnayder fighting back against corporate polluters have gotten worldwide media attention over the last year, as a raft of enormous new petrochemical facilities takes shape along the Mississippi River corridor. Much of the focus has been on the potential hazards posed by specific plants, including the $9.4 billion plastics factory that Formosa plans to build in St. James Parish and the long-standing Denka neoprene facility in St. John Parish, whose dangerous emissions were highlighted in an Environmental Protection Agency model that estimates cancer risk around chemical plants. Indeed, the stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is nicknamed “Cancer Alley” because of its concentration of petrochemical facilities.

Residents Fight Back as ‘Cancer Alley’ Is Getting Even More Toxic – Sharon Lavigne knows some 30 people who have died in and around her tiny parish of St. James, Louisiana, in just the past five years. She buried two close friends this past weekend – one died of cancer, the other heart disease. Two of her brothers have cancer, and her boyfriend of 17 years died of COPD, a respiratory disease linked to air pollution and chemical fumes, in 2013. He was “vibrant and healthy,” she says, until a pipeline company expanded its operations next to his home, adding millions more gallons of crude oil storage tanks. “It was the pollution that killed him,” Lavigne says. This is life in “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch along the banks of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where industry leaders like ExxonMobil, Koch, and Shell operate about 150 fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities. Seven of the 10 census tracts with the highest cancer risk in the nation are found here. The exceptionally elevated toxic air emissions released by the industry are linked to a host of ailments, from cancer to cardiovascular and respiratory disease to reproductive and developmental disorders. And in St. James, toxic facilities are increasingly concentrated in areas with the highest percentage of black and poor residents.It is the frontline of environmental racism. And it is poised to get worse. The first petrochemical plant opened down the road when she was a student at St. James High. There are now 12 petrochemical plants within a 10-mile radius of her home. The air still fills with the sweet syrupy scent of candy when the sugarcane is harvested in the area, but now it’s often overwhelmed by acrid smells that irritate the eyes, sinuses, and skin. “We are boxed in from all sides by plants, tank farms, and noisy railroad tracks,” says Lavigne. “We live in constant fear.” Since 2010, 333 new chemical manufacturing projects have been announced in the U.S., mostly along the Gulf Coast, according to the American Chemical Council. Much of the new infrastructure is dedicated to plastics – 99 percent of which is made from chemicals derived from oil or natural gas. The International Energy Agency predicts that in 2050, 50 percent of the growth in oil demand will be related to plastics production, overtaking that for passenger cars. St. James is also the endpoint of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which became operational in June. It’s the final extension of the Dakota Access Pipeline, carrying fracked oil from North Dakota, the subject of years of mass protest before Trump ordered its completion within days of taking office in 2017.

Even Louisiana’s Wealthier Neighborhoods Can’t Escape Toxic Air in “Cancer Alley” – ProPublica Industrial development usually targets poor communities, but Ascension Parish is one of the richest, and most toxic, places in Louisiana. Some residents say the financial benefits of living there outweigh the risks.Once a sleepy stretch of cane fields and plantation houses, Louisiana’s river corridor has been remade over the past century into a petrochemical powerhouse. When chemical companies looked to build along the Mississippi, areas next to black neighborhoods were typically the first to see the swap of sugar cane for smokestacks. After World War II, “you started to see the aggressive push of industry into rural, predominantly black, plantation lands,” s But Louisiana’s love affair with oil and gas, while disproportionately affecting black communities, has hardly spared white communities. Ascension Parish is perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s annual Toxics Release Inventory, plants in Ascension Parish emit greater quantities of toxic chemicals from industrial stacks than anywhere else in the country. While this method of measuring releases doesn’t factor in the toxicity of each pollutant, it signals relative levels of total chemical activity across regions. Unlike most industrial parishes, Ascension is among Louisiana’s whitest and most affluent. It’s also the third-fastest growing parish in Louisiana. Families flock here for affordable new housing, low crime rates, a booming business climate and some of the state’s best schools. In all conventional measures, Ascension Parish is thriving. Winding River, Changing Demographics Though today’s Ascension Parish challenges some Louisiana archetypes, it hasn’t always looked this way. In the 1940s, according to Colten, petrochemical facilities began popping up on on long, narrow plots that were once part of plantations. These included two such stretches in Ascension Parish, where black families that had settled nearby were either displaced or exposed to increasingly toxic air. Indeed, in the Ascension Parish communities of Geismar and Donaldsonville, the neighborhoods closest to clusters of industry are still some of the most heavily black and poorest sections of the parish. Over the last decade, toxic emissions in Ascension Parish have increased by 109%, to 28 million pounds in 2018, according to analyses by ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate. Elsewhere in Louisiana, only St. Charles Parish saw such a jump. The number of plants in Ascension Parish required to report their emissions also increased from 17 to 21 over that period. Some of the air in Geismar near these new developments is estimated to be more toxic with cancer-causing chemicals than 99.6% of the area throughout the seven Mississippi River parishes between Baton Rouge and St. Charles, according to our analysis of EPA data.

US net gas exports double year-ago levels – U.S. net natural gas exports averaged 4.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) through the first half of 2019 – more than double the average net exports in 2018 (2.0 Bcf/d), the Energy Information Administration reports. The U.S. became a net natural gas exporter on an annual basis in 2017 for the first time in almost six decades. While the U.S. exports natural gas by pipeline to Canada and Mexico, liquefied natural gas exports is where much of the recent increase in total exports comes from, and is a result of more LNG facilities coming online. Total U.S. exports of LNG through the first half of 2019 were 37% higher compared with the same period in 2018. Total U.S. LNG export capacity as of June 2019 was 5.4 Bcf/d across four facilities and nine liquefaction trains. Two new liquefaction units, trains, came online in the first half of 2019: Cameron LNG Train 1 in Louisiana, and Corpus Christi LNG Train 2 in Texas. Cameron LNG was the fourth U.S. LNG export facility placed into service since February 2016. Cameron LNG, which will have a capacity of 1.7 Bcf/d when its three liquefaction trains are completed, shipped its first cargo in May (as part of the initial commissioning process) and then another one in June before ramping up operations in July and August. Corpus Christi LNG Train 2, with a capacity of 1.2 Bcf/d, shipped its first cargo in June and reached substantial completion in September. More LNG facilities have come online in the second half of 2019: Freeport LNG in Texas, with a capacity of 2.0 Bcf/d; and Elba Island in Georgia, with a capacity of 0.3 Bcf/d, both shipped their first commissioning cargos. These two new LNG export facilities, along with the completion of Cameron LNG, will increase U.S. LNG export capacity 81.6%, to 8.9 Bcf/d by the end of 2019, from 4.9 Bcf/d at the end of 2018. Although U.S. LNG exports have grown substantially, most U.S. natural gas trade is transported via pipeline across shared borders with Canada and Mexico. In the first half of 2019, net exports of natural gas by pipeline to Mexico grew 5%, and net exports of natural gas by pipeline to Canada remained relatively flat. In every month from April through August, U.S. natural gas exports by pipeline have exceeded natural gas imports by pipeline – the longest consecutive stretch of exporting more natural gas by pipeline than importing by pipeline on record. U.S. pipeline export capacity to Canada grew in the last few months of 2018 when the second phase of both the Rover Pipeline and the new Nexus pipeline entered service, transporting natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays to the St. Clair point of exit northeast of Detroit, Michigan. Total U.S. natural gas exports to Canada reached 3.3 Bcf/d in February 2019, the highest level this year as of August 2019.

U.S. net natural gas exports in first-half 2019 doubles year-ago levels for second year – EIA – From January through June of 2019, U.S. net natural gas exports averaged 4.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), more than double the average net exports in 2018 (2.0 Bcf/d), according to data in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Natural Gas Monthly. The United States became a net natural gas exporter (exported more than it imported) on an annual basis in 2017 for the first time in almost 60 years. The United States exports natural gas by pipeline to neighboring Canada and Mexico and exports liquefied natural gas (LNG) to several other countries. Much of the recent increase in total exports is a result of more LNG facilities coming online. Total U.S. exports of LNG through the first half of 2019 were 37% higher compared with the same period in 2018. Total U.S. LNG export capacity as of June 2019 was 5.4 Bcf/d across four facilities and nine liquefaction trains. Two new liquefaction units – referred to as trains – came online in the first half of 2019: Cameron LNG Train 1 in Louisiana and Corpus Christi LNG Train 2 in Texas. Cameron LNG was the fourth U.S. LNG export facility placed into service since February 2016. Cameron LNG, which will have a capacity of 1.7 Bcf/d when its three liquefaction trains are completed, shipped its first cargo in May 2019 (as part of the initial commissioning process) and then another one in June before ramping up operations in July and August. Corpus Christi LNG Train 2, with a capacity of 0.6 Bcf/d, shipped its first cargo in July and reached substantial completion in September. More LNG facilities have come online in the second half of 2019: the first train at Freeport LNG in Texas, with a capacity of 0.7 Bcf/d, and the first ten trains at Elba Island in Georgia, with a capacity of 0.03 Bcf/d. These two new LNG export facilities, along with the completion of Cameron LNG, will increase U.S. LNG export capacity to 8.9 Bcf/d by the end of 2020 from 4.9 Bcf/d at the end of 2018. Although U.S. LNG exports have grown substantially, most U.S. natural gas trade is transported via pipeline across shared borders with Canada and Mexico. In the first half of 2019, net exports of natural gas by pipeline to Mexico grew by 5%, and net exports of natural gas by pipeline to Canada remained relatively flat. In every month from April through August, U.S. natural gas exports by pipeline have exceeded natural gas imports by pipeline, the longest consecutive stretch of exporting more natural gas by pipeline than importing by pipeline on record. U.S. pipeline export capacity to Canada grew in the last few months of 2018 when the second phase of both the Rover pipeline and the new NEXUS pipeline entered service, transporting natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica plays in the Appalachian Basin to the St. Clair point of exit northeast of Detroit, Michigan. Total U.S. natural gas exports to Canada reached 3.3 Bcf/d in February 2019, the highest level this year as of August 2019.

U.S. gas market struggles with persistent oversupply- Kemp – (Reuters) – U.S. natural gas stocks have surged during the injection season and are now above the five-year seasonal average for the first time in two years, despite a slump in prices and a sharp drop in the number of rigs drilling for gas. Working stocks in underground storage have risen by 2,465 billion cubic feet (bcf) since the start of April, the largest seasonal gain since 2014, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Stocks have moved above the five-year average this month for the first time since September 2017 and are now 519 bcf (17%) above the same point last year (“Weekly natural gas storage report”, EIA, Oct. 24). In response, prices have slumped in a bid to encourage power producers to buy as much gas as possible and run their gas-fired generation units for more hours at the expense of coal-fired power stations. Futures prices for gas delivered to Henry Hub during calendar year 2020 have fallen to less than $2.50 per million British thermal units, down from almost $2.70 at the same point last year and nearly $2.90 two years ago. Domestic gas production has soared faster than either consumption by domestic power producers or the ability of the export market to absorb it (https://tmsnrt.rs/32UHfmQ). Gas production rose by 10.5% in the three months between May and July compared with the same period a year earlier, only a modest slowdown from a record growth rate of 13.7% in August-October 2018. By contrast, gas consumption by power producers was up by just 1.1% in the three months between May and July from a year earlier, an abrupt deceleration from growth of 18.5% in August-October 2018. Net gas exports continued to accelerate and were up by 342 billion cubic feet between May and July compared with a year earlier. But even the massive rise in exports was not sufficient to prevent a near-record increase in gas stocks during the injection season.

Natural-Gas Prices Jump as Producers Promise Restraint – WSJ -Investors are rewarding energy companies who are promising to produce less energy. The producers that have glutted the market with cheap shale gas are finally relenting, dialing back drilling plans and pledging restraint after years of depressed prices battered their growth-centric business models.

Natural Gas Prices Explode Higher This Week As Forecasts Turn Colder — What a week it has been in the natural gas market, and we have not even reached the middle of the week yet. Today was the last day the November contract will be on the board, and it went out with a bang, up nearly 30 cents from Friday’s close. The entire curve has gotten in on the “rally” act, though the front has been where the biggest gains have come. The reason for the monster rally? Weather. Yes, it is that time of year where focus shifts to Mother Nature in terms of what will most drive natural gas volatility. We have seen quite the colder change for the first half of November since back on Friday. Here is what the models showed in terms of forecast Gas-Weighted Degree Days (GWDDs) last night, compared to just 24 hours prior. Notice both the GEFS and the ECMWF Ensemble (EPS) showed much higher forecast demand, and that doesn’t even account for colder changes seen over the weekend. A better visual image is the GEFS forecast from 5 days ago, valid next week. That’s not a big warm look by any means, but look at how the forecast trended as it rolled forward, seen in this morning’s run of the same model, also valid next week. The trend has very obviously been in the colder direction, quite solidly. With the market so heavily short, a solid bullish catalyst (enter weather) can force at least some of the shorts to cover, enhancing the rally, and that’s likely been a big part of what we have seen the last couple of days.

NYMEX natural gas inches lower after higher than expected storage build report | S&P Global Platts – The NYMEX front-month natural gas contract settled 4.80 cents lower in Thursday trading after the storage build report announced by the US Energy Information Administration was higher than expected. The front-month contract dropped 5.80 cents to settle at $2.633/MMBtu, moving within a range of $2.606-$2.738/MMBtu. “Not only did we miss expectations with a higher than expected injection of 89, it still leaves us 1.4% above the five-year average, something we’ve only been able to say these past few weeks,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group. “Production data shows we are still going to see very strong production for gas. Right now, what’s keeping this market elevated is the cold weather.” The EIA announced an 89 Bcf injection for the week ended October 25, 4 Bcf higher than predicted by a survey conducted by S&P Global Platts Analytics and 24 Bcf higher than the five-year average. Total US production reached an all-time high of 92.7 Bcf/d on October 28 and continued to stay strong. Dry production sat at 90.9 Bcf Thursday and was predicted by Platts Analytics to tick up to an average of 91.4 Bcf in the next eight to 14 days. Total US demand, including exports to Mexico and LNG feedgas exports, reached 97.1 Bcf/d Thursday, the highest daily level since mid-March, according to Platts Analytics. It was predicted that demand will fall over the coming weeks, averaging 95.4 Bcf/d in the next eight to 14 days. The most recent eight- to 14-day outlook from the US National Weather Service called for cooler-than-average temperatures in the Midcontinent and Northeast, parts of the Rockies, Texas, and Southeast, with warmer-than-average temperatures in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest and parts of Texas and Florida.

Delfin pushes decision to build Louisiana floating LNG export project to 2020 – (Reuters) – Delfin Midstream Inc has delayed its plan to make a final investment decision on its proposed Delfin Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) export terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana to 2020 from 2019:

• * Delfin said in a release on Tuesday it entered into new agreements for front-end design and engineering work on a newbuild FLNG vessel with units of Samsung Heavy Industries Co Ltd and Black & Veatch.
• * The company said it was on track to complete an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract in mid-2020.
• * With the 2020 target for a final investment decision, the company said it was looking at first LNG production in mid 2024.
• * “While the (U.S.-China) trade dispute delays a firm agreement with Chinese offtakers, we are certainly continuing our discussions and negotiations with Chinese offtakers as well as shipyards and financiers,” Delfin Chief Operating Officer Wouter Pastoor said in an email.
• * Before the trade war heated up in mid 2018, Delfin had signed a preliminary agreement to sell gas to China Gas Holdings Co Ltd.
• * Delfin’s project seeks to use existing offshore pipelines to supply gas to up to four FLNG vessels that could produce up to 13 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG or 1.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas.
• * One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.
• * The company is also developing the Avocet LNG project with slots for two additional FLNG vessels.
• * Delfin says its FLNG model should allow it to supply gas to customers at lower costs than onshore LNG export terminals. All big LNG export terminals operating in the United States liquefy gas at onshore facilities.
• * The Delfin plant is one of dozens of LNG export projects under development in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

UAE Firm to Invest in Texas LNG Project Developer – Mubadala Investment Co., the Abu Dhabi government-owned sovereign wealth fund, has agreed to purchase $50 million of NextDecade Corp’s common stock in a private placement, the companies reported Thursday. NextDecade, which is developing the Rio Grande LNG export project in Brownsville, Texas, will issue the common stock to Mubadala at a price of $6.27 per share, according to a joint written statement from the firms. “We are honored to welcome Mubadala, a leading global investor, as a shareholder in our company,” NextDecade Chairman and CEO Matt Schatzman commented. “Mubadala brings a valuable perspective on large-scale infrastructure investment and the growing role of LNG in the Middle East and other markets around the world. We look forward to a strong and lasting partnership.” In conjunction with the deal, the companies also stated that Mubadala will receive a seat on NextDecade’s board of directors. Also, Mubadala – whose global investment portfolio across various industries totals $229 billion – will be able to contribute project-level capital upon the Rio Grande LNG final investment decision. As Rigzone reported in May 2018, the Rio Grande project would take in associated natural gas shipped from the Permian Basin. The 27-million-ton-per-annum, six-train Rio Grande LNG export terminal in the Port of Brownsville would receive gas via the Rio Bravo Pipeline. The pipeline – a project NextDecade is developing with Enbridge Inc. – would deliver up to 4.5 billion cubic feet per day of Permian and Eagle Ford Shale gas from the Agua Dulce supply area near Corpus Christi. In May of this year, Rigzone also reported that Bechtel Oil, Gas and Chemicals won Rio Grande LNG engineering, procurement and construction contracts worth more than $9.5 billion.

Texas Hit Hard By Shale Slowdown – Texas’ economy is perhaps the most vulnerable to oil price swings given its leading role in the country’s oil industry. Recently, as prices have remained low, talk has begun about the outlook for the state’s economy.According to a recent Reuters report, for example, smaller independent oil and gas producers in the Lone Star State are struggling to get loans from banks as the latter become increasingly wary of the ability of the borrowers to return the money when the time comes.Jobs in the Texas oil and gas industry are falling, too. The Houston Business Journal reported this month that September saw a 1,100 decline in the number of jobs in the mining and logging sector – the category that includes oil and gas jobs. Over the 12 months from September 2018, the state’s oil and gas industry added just 1,700 new jobs, which was the lowest number of new job additions to any Texas industry over the same period, data from the Texas Workforce Commission showed.Yet not everyone is worried. The University of Houston Energy Fellows, for instance, wrote in an article for Forbes that “the alarm bells are premature.” While the experts that make up the group acknowledge there are plenty of reasons to be worried about the economy of Houston – the article focuses on the city – oil prices are not among them.The trade war with China and the anticipation of a global economic slowdown caused by it is a top concern for any economy and Houston is no exception. Political economic problems in Europe are also a cause for worry. Yet, according to the University of Houston Energy Fellows, bankruptcies in the Houston oil and gas industry are only slightly higher this year than last, and the credit crunch energy independents are facing now is “far from comparable to 2015-16.”True as this may be, there is no guarantee things will plateau at this level of problems and not deteriorate further. Reuters reports that banks have marked down the perceived value of U.S. oil and gas not just for next year but for the next five years. This value makes the foundation of reserve-based loans, so the lower it is, the less money the banks would be willing to give businesses.

Permian Water Project Secures Financing -A pipeline project that would transport non-potable reclaimed water from Lubbock, Texas, to industrial customers in the Permian Basin has cleared an important hurdle.Palisade Pipeline LLC reported Tuesday that it has closed development financing with Macquarie Capital to construct the pipeline, which would carry reclaimed water purchased from Lubbock’s Southeast Water Reclamation Plant to oil and gas industry users in Texas and New Mexico.“We are excited about the opportunity to preserve groundwater in the Permian Basin while providing a source of revenue to the City of Lubbock,” Phillip Laughlin, Palisade’s president, said in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. “We appreciate Macquarie Capital’s support of this groundbreaking project.”In addition to providing money for the project, Macquarie Capital will act as Palisade’s sole financial advisor in the financing of the pipeline. The Lubbock City Council approved a letter of intent in June of this year to sell Palisade up to 6 million gallons per day of non-potable reclaimed water from its treatment facility.

US oil rig count up only by two as oil, gas prices down from 2018 levels: Enverus – The number of rigs drilling for gas and oil in US basins rose to 902 this week, up two rigs from the previous week, as prices for both commodities remained low compared with year-ago prices, according to data released Thursday by Enverus. The rig count for oil-directed rigs remained fairly steady week over week, as the number of rigs drilling for oil in the Permian Basin fell by two to 407, while the Bakken Shale rig count remained flat at 55, compared with the previous week. Average crude oil prices in the US rose to $54.20/b compared with $53.60 in the previous week. However, crude prices in the week fell $13.79/b compared with the same week of the previous year. In the Haynesville Shale play of northern Louisiana the number of gas-directed drilling rigs rose by two to 57, compared with the previous week, as average Henry Hub gas prices remained relatively flat at $2.18/MMBtu versus $2.19/MMBtu in the previous week. Gas prices in the basin were $1.08/MMBtu lower than prices in the comparable week of 2018. The number of rigs drilling for gas in the Appalachian Basin fell by six week over week, as the number of rigs targeting the Marcellus Shale fell to 36, four fewer than were operating in the play the previous week. The Utica Shale rig count fell to 15, down two from the previous week. Average gas prices as the Dominion South pricing point rose to $1.77/MMBtu up 33 cents/MMBtu from the previous week, but $1.27/MMBtu lower than prices recorded in the same week of last year.

Guv, NMED speak out against Trump administration’s EPA methane regulation rollbacks — The New Mexico Environment Department and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham strongly oppose the EPA’s proposal to roll back regulations for methane and other emissions from the oil and gas industry.The EPA proposed removing some regulations covering methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from transmission and storage sources and processing and production operations. The proposed rule changes will “save the industry millions of dollars in compliance costs each year,” the EPA said, “while maintaining health and environmental regulations on oil and gas sources that the agency considers appropriate.” NMED Secretary James Kenney submitted comments in opposition to the proposal to the EPA Thursday night. Kenney argued the proposed rule “preempts state law while imposing significant burdens upon state environmental agencies.” “The proposed revisions will significantly degrade air quality and adversely impact public health throughout the U.S., including the State of New Mexico,” Kenney said. Kenny’s comments came after the EPA held a hearing on the proposal in Dallas last week. Several residents from New Mexico testified at the hearing, as did a representative of NMED. New Mexico residents living in and around the Permian Basin complained of blisters, nosebleeds and headaches as a result, they claim of emissions released by nearby oil and gas wells, according to the Carlsbad Current Argus. NMED Environmental Protection Division director Sandra Ely said the EPA should hold a second hearing on the proposal in New Mexico. “Our state will be uniquely affected by this proposal and the State should be provided an opportunity for more robust public involvement from those affected by the proposal,” Ely said in her testimony. “A single public hearing and 60-day public comment period are woefully inadequate and disappointing, given the scope and consequences of this action.”

Oil-backed Blue Wave: New Mexico funds progressive policy through fracking – As a senior at Native American Community Academy, Jonathon Juarez-Alonzo, 17, has been contemplating his next steps after high school. And as an organizer for Albuquerque’s climate strike, he’s worried about the future of New Mexico, a state on the front lines of climate change in the middle of a seemingly endless fracking boom. But when New Mexico’s newly elected Democratic governor unveiled her new tuition-free college program for the state’s residents, those two worries became one. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats swept New Mexico’s elections: they flipped the state’s sole red seat in Congress; elected Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, to the governor’s office; and strengthened majorities in the state legislature. Emboldened by the “Blue Wave” and coming off eight years of a Republican governor, New Mexico Democrats began to pursue a progressive agenda, passing gun control legislation, raising the state’s minimum wage, reducing marijuana penalties, and trying to fix the state’s education system. In September, Lujan Grisham announced a proposal that would make New Mexico the first state in the country to eliminate tuition for all students in two- and four-year college programs, regardless of income, part of what her office says is a long term-initiative to diversify its economy. Proponents of the bill say it would be a boon for a state with one of the nation’s highest poverty rates and some of the country’s worst-performing public schools. But critics, and some students like Jonathon – who stands to benefit from tuition-free college – see a conflict at the core of the governor’s plan: free college would be funded largely through revenue from the state’s ongoing oil and gas boom. “We’re not saying we don’t want or we don’t support free public education,” Jonathon said. “But it’s like we’re in a hostage situation where we have to choose free public education or a livable planet in the future.”

US House OKs protections near historical park in New Mexico – Chaco Culture National Historical Park is at the center of a decades-long debate over how to manage oil and gas development in a sprawling area of northwestern New Mexico that is dotted by sites tied to the park but that lie outside its boundaries. The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved legislation prohibiting drilling on the checkerboard of federal land that borders the park. The measure also calls for terminating existing non-producing leases in the area and suggests more studies and protective measures be taken to address health, safety and environmental effects on communities and tribal interests. Federal land managers have been deferring interest by the oil and gas industry in parcels within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of the park to address the concerns of environmentalists and Native American leaders. The legislation would codify that practice, essentially establishing a buffer around the park. U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat, is among the sponsors. He remembers first visiting the park years ago when he was in his 20s. He said he is confident the legislation will have bipartisan support. He pointed to the willingness of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to defer drilling leases around Chaco while regulators prepare a new management plan for the region’s resources. Bernhardt’s decision came earlier this year after touring the world heritage site and meeting with leaders from the Navajo Nation and New Mexico’s pueblos. Similar legislation to create a protective zone around Chaco is pending in the Senate.

Thirty months after fatal Firestone blast, Colorado’s widening web of underground pipelines still not fully mapped -Yet pipelines still fail, sometimes causing catastrophic harm, and oil and gas companies are resisting stricter controls. Problems along the larger pipelines in Colorado for which the federal government keeps records are reported at least once a month, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Colorado health officials say air pollution leaking from pipelines worsens climate warming. And state data shows pipelines as a source of toxic spills.The uncertainty about where lines are located has complicated efforts to create rules, let alone ensure inspections. Colorado officials estimated that a broad unregulated class of pipelines called “gathering lines” in the state spans tens of thousands of miles, but couldn’t give a more precise number because they lack location information from companies, which still aren’t required to provide it.State officials have asked companies only to give start-point and end-point coordinates for the smaller class of pipelines that industry officials and state regulators call “flowlines.” These connect wells to surrounding equipment. (The data that companies have submitted, ahead of Thursday’s deadline, indicates flowlines span at least 6,522 miles, an oil and gas commission spokeswoman said.)Among the Post’s other findings:

• – Along the bigger interstate lines in Colorado, federal data shows 35 “accidents” and “incidents” since early 2017. Those resulted from a variety of problems including leaky valves, ruptured seals and a farmer plowing too close. State records on oil and gas facilities along pipelines reveal multiple fires and explosions since April 2017. And pipeline companies in Colorado haven’t been required to report all incidents.
• – Nationwide, 438,000 miles of the 2.9 million miles of underground oil and gas pipelines are not regulated, according to calculations by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
• – The number of serious pipeline incidents reported in the U.S. averages 32 a year, causing an average of 12 deaths and 66 injuries, a 2019 Congressional Research Service study found. As pipelines deteriorate, the number of serious incidents increased to 40 in 2018.
• – For the pipelines that federal authorities oversee, 20 inspectors are tasked with covering Colorado and 11 other western states. And when the inspectors try to shut down pipelines where they suspect corrosion, they say they face resistance.
• – Deficient pipelines cause roughly 10% of the toxic spills that contaminate Colorado soil, water and air, the state’s engineering integrity supervisor Mark Schlagenhauf told The Post.

Colorado’s lag in dealing with pipeline safety and environmental harm has compelled blast survivor Martinez – forced by her injuries to retire from her work as a high school chemistry teacher – to take on this matter as a family mission. Martinez now is advocating for comprehensive public mapping of all underground lines, frequent inspections including pressure tests before restarting abandoned lines, and a rule that companies must remove their old wells and lines. “I don’t see why this industry can leave their trash in the ground. Flowlines that are abandoned need to be removed,” she said. “It is your right to know what is under your house. And what is under the school where you are sending your kids?”

As Local Control of Fracking in Colorado Begins, Small-Town Elections Draw Big Money | Westword – Many Colorado voters sitting down to fill out their ballots this year will be doing something no one in the state has ever done before. In more than a dozen towns along the Front Range and beyond, residents are voting to elect mayors and city council members who will have the power to control where and how oil and gas development can take place within their city limits. A new law enacted by Democrats at the State Capitol in April, Senate Bill 181, empowered local governments to regulate drilling for the first time ever. For a handful of suburban communities north of Denver, where battles over fracking have been fought for years, these new “local control” powers have changed everything. The stakes have never been higher – and the money being spent on some local races proves it. In Thornton, mayoral candidate Jan Kulmann has raised over $70,000 for her campaign for the part-time position, campaign finance reports show, including more than $20,000 from Kulmann herself. An executive at Denver-based Whiting Petroleum, Kulmann has served on Thornton City Council since 2013. “Seventy thousand dollars is a lot of money for a city of Thornton race,” says Suzie Brundage, an activist who unsuccessfully challenged Kulmann for her Ward 4 council seat in 2017. “For me, it’s important that the people aren’t drowned out by big corporate money, and that our voices don’t get lost in all of this.” Disclosures show that Kulmann’s campaign has received more than $16,000 in contributions from organizations and individuals with ties to the fossil-fuel industry. That total includes $1,500 each from American Energy Advocates, a Fort Collins-based nonprofit, and Heidi Gill, a former Anadarko executive and founder of Urban Solution Group, which offers “mitigation planning” to oil and gas drillers operating near residential areas. Like many other municipalities in the region, Thornton has a fraught history with fracking and efforts to control it at the local level. While there has been no new drilling in Thornton in more than a decade, several major active or proposed projects sit just outside city limits in unincorporated Adams County or nearby Broomfield.

Op-Ed: Governor Polis, Answer the Youth Call for the End to Fracking | Westword – Two weeks of Colorado Climate Strike actions culminated in last month’s rally in Civic Center Park with the inspirational sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who ignited the global climate strikes. In Colorado and around the world, adults answered youth calls to join them in a week of action to address the climate crisis, which is imperiling their future. There were over 48 Climate Strike events statewide, with over 10,000 participants yielding over 100 news stories. Over 7.6 million people participated globally, making it the largest climate mobilization in history. At the Colorado climate protests, youth activists repeatedly called on Governor Jared Polis and other elected officials to stop permitting fossil fuel projects, including fracking for oil and gas, recognizing that the best available science requires us to cut fossil fuel emissions by at least 50 percent within a decade. Last year’s UN International Panel on Climate Change report indicated that this level of emissions reduction is required to have even a 50 percent chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent the most dire global impacts from resulting in far more deaths and extinctions. For a 66 percent chance of meeting the UN goal, we have to stop burning all fossil fuels by 2035, and of course, we must act even sooner for a greater chance of protecting our children’s futures. Unfortunately, instead of reducing emissions, recent NASA, Harvard and Cornell studies have confirmed that the frightening global methane spike over the last decade is a result of U.S. fracking. And, of course, when all of the fracked oil and gas is burned, it contributes even more greenhouse gas emissions. These are major cumulative impacts threatening the health, safety and very lives of billions of people – here in Colorado and around the world – and it’s contributing to the sixth mass extinction period we’ve entered – with currently over 200 species going extinct every single day. Instead of answering the call of the youth to protect their future, Governor Polis (and the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission and Air Quality Control Commission under his leadership) are continuing to permit fracking at levels near the permitting under former governor John Hickenlooper (who bragged about drinking fracking fluid). Research released from the Department of Public Health shows health impacts to people living within 2,000 feet of fracking, including high levels of benzene, a carcinogen that is likely related to an increase in nosebleeds and childhood leukemia associated with living by fracking.

State Department Solicits Comments On Keystone XL Pipeline – On a windy night in Billings, Mont., Patricia Iron Cloud and about 60 others were protesting the Keystone XL pipeline ahead of a public meeting on Oct. 29. It was the public’s first and only chance to meet with U.S. State Department officials about a new environmental analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline.”I think it’s at least 19 degrees right now,” Iron Cloud said, shaking in a traditional ribbon skirt and ballet flats with no socks. “Who does that?”She’s a tribal council member for the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, and said she drove more than six hours in the snow to deliver this message: “The government needs to speak with us as people.””We have our children,” she said. “I have 46 grandchildren.”Later, Iron Cloud went inside to declare her opposition to the pipeline at a comment station with a stenographer.Because the pipeline would cross an international border, the State Department iscollecting public comments on its revised environmental impact statement for the pipeline. If built, the controversial extension would carry tar sands oil from Hardisty, Canada, to Steele City, Neb.The Obama administration killed the pipeline but President Trump revived it by presidential permit.The State Department event wasn’t a hearing, more like an open house with poster boards, maps of the pipeline’s proposed path and occasional arguments between people who came to offer comment.A woman stood up in the center of the room, clutching her phone in front of her to livestream the confrontation. “If you don’t sign the contract your land will be taken through eminent domain, how is that a fair process?” she asked.

US State Department oil pipeline review doesn’t ease worries (AP) – Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada said the Trump administration is understating the potential for the line to break and spill into water bodies such as Montana’s Missouri River, as the U.S. State Department held the sole public meeting Tuesday on a new environmental review of the long-stalled proposal. Backers say the $8 billion project would create thousands of construction jobs and boost local tax revenues. Sponsor TC Energy insists the line would be safe, despite spills on other lines operated by the company. A federal judge blocked it last year, saying more environmental study was needed. President Donald Trump issued a presidential permit for the line in March in a bid to avoid another unfavorable court ruling. The Republican has been a strong supporter and revived the project after it was rejected under President Barack Obama, in part over worries it would make climate change worse. Tuesday’s meeting, held at a conference center in Billings, was not a public hearing and attendees were invited to use computer terminals to submit formal comments. But the event briefly turned into a shouting match between pipeline backers and opponents, reflecting Keystone XL’s emergence as a political lightning rod since it was first proposed in 2008.

Trans Canada reports oil spill near Edinburg – Trans Canada reported an oil spill near Edinburg to the Walsh County Sheriff’s Office at approximately 5:40 a.m. on Wednesday. Trans Canada is on site and working to clean the spill. The roads around the area have been closed to assist with cleanup. The Walsh County Sheriff’s Office says security will be on site and will fine anyone found going around the closed road signs.

Keystone pipeline leaks unknown amount of oil in North Dakota – A pipeline that carries tar sands oil from Canada through seven states has leaked an unknown amount of crude oil over more than a quarter-mile swath in northeastern North Dakota, state environmental regulators said Wednesday. State Environmental Quality Chief Dave Glatt told The Associated Press that regulators were notified late Tuesday night of the leak near Edinburg, in Walsh County. Glatt said pipeline owner TC Energy shut down the pipeline after the leak was detected. The cause of the spill is under investigation.The Calgary, Alberta-based company formerly known as TransCanada did not immediately respond to AP’s phone messages seeking comment Wednesday. State regulators were on the scene Wednesday afternoon, and they estimated that the area of the spill was 1,500 feet long by 15 feet wide. Glatt said some wetlands were affected, but not any sources of drinking water.

Keystone Leaks Crude Oil in North Dakota on Same Day as Trump State Department Pipeline Hearing –The Keystone pipeline spilled an unknown amount of crude oil across a quarter-mile area of northeastern North Dakota on Tuesday, the same day the Trump State Department held its sole public hearing on an environmental analysis of the widely opposed Keystone XL project. North Dakota environmental officials said Wednesday that they became aware of the leak late Tuesday night, and TC Energy – the pipeline’s owner – shut down the tar sands pipeline for an investigation into the spill.The local Grand Forks Herald reported that TC Energy, previously known as TransCanada, had not fixed the leak as of Wednesday afternoon.”The Department of Environmental Quality estimated the spill was about 1,500 feet in length by 15 feet wide,” according to the Herald. “Steps are being taken to contain the release, but the volume of oil that has spilled is currently unknown, officials said. Walsh County Emergency Manager Brent Nelson said the spill is contained to a wetland and has affected an area where a local farmer cuts hay.”The company denied that the spill had any impact on drinking water, a claim that was met with skepticism. Corp says the oil hasn’t contaminated any drinking water & they’re cleaning it up but anyone who drives to the site will be fined by their security so who knows what’s going on. #NOKXLhttps://t.co/7H6Dcz4bsm Keystone’s latest leak came just hours after the U.S. State Department held a public meeting in Billings, Montana to solicit comments on the department’s new analysis of the potential environmental impact of the Keystone XL project. The Trump administration has worked hard to approve and accelerate the project over the protests and legal challenges of indigenous rights organizations and green groups. Keystone XL would would carry up to 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska. “The Keystone XL pipeline was a bad idea when it was proposed 11 years ago, and it remains a bad idea today,” said the environmental group Bold Nebraska in a public comment on the State Department analysis. In a column on Wednesday, Esquire’s Charles Pierce wrote that, despite strong opposition, “the State Department will do anything to get this thing built. Anything.”

Keystone pipeline leaks 383,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota – Part of the Keystone 1 Pipeline in North Dakota was shut down after a leak of about 9,120 barrels of oil – 383,040 gallons – was discovered, TC Energy company said in a statement. The oil leak was discovered just north of Edinburg, in the northeast part of the state, and affected about 2,500 square yards of land, the company said. A drop in pressure was detected on Tuesday, and the pipeline was immediately shut down, the company said. The company is not sure how the leak started, but says an independent party is examining the pipeline. “We are establishing air quality, water and wildlife monitoring and will continue monitoring throughout the response. There have been no reported injuries or impacted wildlife,” TC Energy said. “The safety of the public and environment are our top priorities and we will continue to provide updates as they become available.” The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality said the spill impacted a wetland area. “Personnel from the NDDEQ are at the site and will continue to monitor the investigation and remediation,” the department said in a news release. The Indigenous Environmental Network, an environmental justice nonprofit group, responded to the spill with concern. “This is exactly the kind of spill we are worried about when it comes to Keystone XL being built. It has never been if a pipeline breaks but rather when,” said Joye Braun, Indigenous Environmental Network frontline community organizer.

Keystone Pipeline Shutdown Raises Costs for U.S. Gulf Refiners – The Keystone crude pipeline was shut Wednesday after leaking thousands of barrels of crude in North Dakota, the third spill along the pipeline’s route in less than three years. =TC Energy Corp.’s 590,000 barrel-a-day pipeline that carries crude from Alberta to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast ruptured October 29 near the city of Edinburg in North Dakota, said Brent Nelson, an emergency manager for Walsh County. About 9,120 barrels were released, some of which impacted a wetland, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. TC Energy declared force majeure on the pipeline system after the shutdown, according to people familiar with the matter. An emergency response team has contained the impacted area, and the system is shutfrom Hardisty, Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma and to Wood River/Patoka, Illinois, the company said in a statement. TC Energy also reduced rates on the Marketlink pipeline, an extension of Keystone that runs from Cushing to Port Arthur, Texas, according to people familiar with the matter. The shutdown stands to affect U.S. Gulf Coast refiners seeking alternative heavy crude supplies amid sanctions on Venezuela, lagging output from Mexico and OPEC production cuts. At the same time, Alberta’s oil producers are struggling to cope with production limits imposed earlier this year when too much oil encountered too few pipelines, causing prices to collapse. Heavy Western Canadian Select crude’s discount to West Texas Intermediate futures widened $19 a barrel Thursday, the widest since December, data compiled by Bloomberg show. After the Keystone spill in South Dakota in 2017, the discount widened from about $11 a barrel to more than $25 a barrel. In the Gulf Coast, heavy Canadian crude was about $1.50 a barrel stronger than before the spill, according to market participants. Gulf Coast refiners could seek medium-grades of sour crude to replace the heavy Canadian barrels, Kevin Birn, IHS Markit’s director of North American crude oil markets, said by telephone. “You could see refiners pivot to alternative sources of supply,” he said. “There will be some flexibility in the system to address this.” The spill, estimated to be 1,500 feet in length by 15 feet wide, comes as TC Energy seeks to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The company said Keystone was probably the source of a spill in Missouri in February that shut a segment of the line. In 2017, a spill in South Dakota reduced rates on the line for months, causing Canadian oil prices to collapse. No new export pipelines out of Canada are planned until late next year at the earliest, when Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 is scheduled to start operation. Two other pipeline projects including the government-owned Trans Mountain line to Vancouver area as well as the proposed Keystone XL have faced regulatory and legal delays in addition to fierce opposition from environmental groups and landowners.

Why The Latest Keystone Spill Is Disastrous For Canadian Oil – The Keystone Pipeline was shut down this week after it ruptured and spilled in North Dakota.TC Energy – formerly known as TransCanada – said on Wednesday that it shut down the 590,000-bpd line after it detected a drop in pressure. “TC Energy immediately began the process to shut down the pipeline, activated its emergency response procedures and dispatched ground technicians to assess the situation,” the company said.The company did not specify whether the entire pipeline was shut down or just a portion. “At this time there is no indication that it has impacted anybody’s drinking water,” said Karl Rockeman, director of the division of water quality for North Dakota’s health department, according to local press reports. “It appears to (be) contained within the area.”The repair and cleanup could take as long as two to three months, according to Reuters.The pipeline runs from Alberta to refineries in the Midwest and is a crucial conduit for Canada’s oil industry. The prospect of an outage helped depress prices for Western Canada Select (WCS), which fell relative to WTI ever-so-slightly on Wednesday. WCS is trading below $38 per barrel, or about $17 per barrel below WTI.This is not the first time that the Keystone Pipeline has spilled. In November 2017, the pipeline ruptured and spilled more than 200,000 gallons in South Dakota. The pipeline was offline for weeks. The latest spill is yet another reminder that while the industry trumpets pipelines as the safest way to move oil, spills are not exactly a rarity. “We don’t yet know the extent of the damage from this latest tar sands spill, but what we do know is that this is not the first time this pipeline has spilled toxic tar sands, and it won’t be the last,” Catherine Collentine of the Sierra Club said in a statement. “We’ve always said it’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when, and once again TC Energy has made our case for us.”

Democrats Just Accidentally Sparked A Federal Fracking Boom – Eyeing more restrictions on drilling following the 2020 presidential election, some U.S. oil and gas companies may accelerate fracking on public lands over the next year. Concho Resources said that in order to mitigate risk from a potential ban on fracking in 2021, the company is running rigs on its federal acreage now.The comment comes in light of the relatively strong rise of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is arguably the front runner, or at least in the top tier. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has trailed a bit, although a new poll from New Hampshire has him in first place there. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who offers up a more industry-friendly approach to energy and climate change, has slid in the polls. He is still considered among the top tier, but his fundraising has been anemic, his performance halting and unconvincing, and his momentum heading in the wrong direction.Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both promised to ban hydraulic fracturing. As president, neither would be able to outright ban the practice entirely, as it would require an act of Congress. But their ability to disrupt the use of fracking on federal lands would be much greater.Related: U.S. Shale Braces For Brutal Earnings Season“‘If Sen. Warren were to win…’ was getting a lot of airtime in our meetings,” Jake Roberts, an exploration-and-production analyst at Houston’s Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., told the Wall Street Journal recently. “We were surprised to see people taking it so seriously.” Tudor Pickering said that if fracking were banned, oil and natural gas prices would spike and many oilfield services companies would be forced out of business. A mid-October analysis from RBC Capital Markets found that Talos Energy was most exposed to a regulatory crackdown, largely the result of a hypothetical ban on offshore drilling in federal waters.A Cowen Inc. analyst told the WSJ that some companies that have a relatively heavy reliance on federal lands have underperformed lately, “coincidentally, or not.” Those include, Devon Energy, Concho Resources, and Occidental Petroleum. Meanwhile, companies like Kosmos Energy, Hess Corp., and Apache Corp. would lose little, Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in early October.

Environmental groups sue Trump administration over drilling plan – Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s plan to open up hundreds of thousands of acres of land in California to oil and gas drilling. The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the plan to open more than 700,000 acres of land to oil and gas lease sales.”Defendants failed to consider meaningful alternatives to the plan amendment, failed to analyze and disclose the environmental impacts, and denied the public the opportunity to comment on its environmental analyses as the law requires,” the lawsuit reads.It also says the plan opens the land up to “dangerous and polluting techniques like steam injection and hydraulic fracturing.”Neither the Department of Justice nor BLM immediately responded to The Hill’s request for comment. BLM spokeswoman Sarah Webster told Reuters in a statement that the suit was under agency review. She said the administration’s decision “strikes a balance between resource conservation and energy development consistent with BLM’s mission for managing the lands for multiple use and sustained yield.”The wire service previously reported that the administration had announced approval for the plan earlier this month.“Oil and gas extraction is a dirty, dangerous business that poisons our water, kills wildlife and worsens the climate crisis,”Clare Lakewood, senior Center for Biological Diversity attorney, said in a statement. “It’s reckless and illegal for Trump officials to open our public lands to oil companies without considering the human and environmental costs. We’re taking them to court to keep this planet livable for our kids,” Lakewood added.

Green groups sue Trump administration over California drilling plan – (Reuters) – Two environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its plan to open up more than 720,000 acres (291,370 hectares) of federal land in California for oil and gas development. The lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity comes nearly four weeks after the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved a plan that would allow oil and gas leasing in 11 counties in the Central California coastal region. The move ended a five-year moratorium on leases in the state that were prompted by a legal challenge. In court papers filed in federal court in San Francisco, the conservation groups argued that the bureau broke the law by failing to analyze the harm drilling would cause to groundwater supplies, climate change, and the potential for earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. BLM spokeswoman Sarah Webster said in an emailed statement that the agency was reviewing the lawsuit. The Oct. 4 decision “strikes a balance between resource conservation and energy development consistent with BLM’s mission for managing the lands for multiple use and sustained yield,” Webster added.

Critics gear up for response to lease sale in Arctic refuge (AP) – Opponents of oil drilling in America’s largest wildlife refuge have a message for oil drillers and the people who finance them: Don’t become the company known for the demise of America’s polar bears. The Department of the Interior hopes to conduct a lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the end of the year but environmental groups say they will challenge those plans in federal court and the court of public opinion. “We will not tolerate the administration’s brazen attempt to paper over the impacts of this disastrous proposal, and we will see them in court,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife. They claim an environmental review was rushed, incomplete and preordained and that it presents only a fraction of the long-term damage that will occur if drilling rigs are allowed into what’s now a wilderness area. “This analysis is a big step in carrying out the clear mandate we received from Congress to develop and implement a leasing program for the Coastal Plain,” Bureau of Land Management spokesman Derrick Henry said in an email to The Associated Press, adding that any future actions would require separate environmental analysis. The refuge in the northeast corner of Alaska was created in 1960 and expanded by Congress in 1980 to nearly the size of South Carolina. About 12,500 square miles (32,375 sq. kilometers) are formally designated as wilderness. However, Congress ordered that 2,300 square miles (5,957 sq. kilometers) of refuge coastal plain be studied for natural resources. The coastal plain is the area between the Arctic Ocean and mountains of the Brooks Range. During winter, pregnant polar bears use it for dens. In spring, it’s the preferred nursery for the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the plain holds 10.4 billion barrels of oil. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has called the coastal plain North America’s greatest prospect for conventional petroleum production. Drilling is supported by virtually everyone elected in recent years to statewide office in Alaska because it would create jobs, put oil in the trans-Alaska pipeline and put cash in the coffers of state government.

Americans would rather reduce oil and gas exploration than ‘drill, baby, drill’ – Americans would rather reduce oil and gas exploration than ‘drill, baby, drill’ – A large majority of Americans say drilling for oil and natural gas off the coasts and on public lands should decrease or remain at current levels, a viewpoint at odds with the expansion promoted by President Trump as part of his “energy dominance” agenda.In a nationwide public opinion poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 8 in 10 people said drilling in the United States should “decrease” or “stay as is.”Just over half, 51 percent, said energy exploration should be reduced on federal lands, and 53 percent said it should be reduced offshore. Thirty-two percent said it should stay as is on federal lands and waters.Less than 15 percent support an increase in drilling on public lands or at sea. The poll comes as the Trump administration is issuing hundreds of permits to explore for fossil fuels on taxpayer-owned land, particularly in the West. The administration is also considering a plan that would open 95 percent of the outer continental shelf to leasing and potentially to drilling, making it the largest proposed expansion in U.S. history.

Quantifying The Impact Of A Fracking Ban On U.S. Gas Production -A number of Democratic candidates have endorsed a fracking ban, recently including Elizabeth Warren, and as Bob McNally said, this would “vaporize the oil and gas boom in the United States.” In this piece, I will try to quantify the impact of a fracking ban on the U.S. natural gas supply, and the concomitant economic effects. Of course, there is some skepticism that she would actually do that if elected, and suspicion that the suggestion is nothing more than an attempt to appeal to the more liberal Democratic primary voters. Given that Democrats from Barack Obama to Jerry Brown have not opposed (regulated) fracking, and the pertinent fact that politicians often make promises they don’t intend to keep, (shocking I know), I would lean towards that myself. My belief is strengthened by the nature of the arguments in favor of a fracking ban. Yes, it’s done by big oil (I mean BIG OIL), except many of the companies are much smaller. Yes, it’s a novel method, except it’s been done for about a century in various forms. And yes, there is evidence of pollutants like benzene near fracking sites, but mainly because there’s benzene nearly everywhere. One would like to think that the public would recognize that argument resembles fears of radiation from nuclear power plants – which are trivial when compared to natural radiation levels. But wait, you say, haven’t there been studies linking proximity to fracking sites and health problems like low birth weight? True, although the key word is “link” which is the weakest type of medical evidence. After all, marijuana use is linked to low birth weight, as is caffeine, steroid treatments, depression, and fears of immigration raids. Governor Cuomo of New York seems unlikely to ban marijuana use because of the link, unless perhaps it was being sold by Exxon.

Don’t Bank On A Boring Propane Market This Winter –U.S. propane production has been on the rise for most of 2019, but propane consumption by steam crackers has been reined in by poor economics, and propane exports have been constrained by export-capacity shortfalls. That’s led to a big buildup in propane inventories, which stand at near-record levels as the market prepares for a winter heating season that is forecasted to be milder than normal. So we’re in for only a modest draw on propane stocks between now and spring, right? Not necessarily. There’s change in the air regarding propane supply, cracker demand and export capacity and, as we learned in the balmy winter of 2016-17, the U.S. propane market isn’t nearly as dependent on the weather as it used to be. Today, we assess recent market developments and explains why a big decline in propane stocks is a real possibility. Propane is an NGL purity product that has two primary uses: as a fuel (mostly for heating, but also for cooking and crop drying, and occasionally for cars, trucks and buses) or as a feedstock for petrochemical plants (steam crackers to make ethylene, or propane dehydrogenation – PDH – plants to make propylene). Propane also has two primary sources of supply: refineries and natural gas processing plants, the latter of which separate out mixed NGLs from natural gas streams. These mixed NGLs from processing plants (also known as y-grade) then are sent to fractionators, where y-grade is divvied up into what are called “purity” products (ethane, propane, normal butane, isobutane and natural gasoline). The Shale Revolution has enabled the U.S. to produce more than enough propane to meet its own heating and petchem needs, and to become a major exporter of propane.

Small U.S. oil and gas companies get cold shoulder from large banks (Reuters) – The largest banking lenders to the U.S. oil and gas sector are becoming more cautious, marking down their expectations for oil and gas prices that underpin loans in a move expected to put further financial stress on struggling producers, industry and banking sources said. Major banks including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Royal Bank of Canada have, as part of regular biannual reviews, cut their estimated values for oil-and-gas companies’ reserves, which serve as the basis for those companies to receive reserve-based loans (RBLs), according to more than a dozen sources familiar with the activity. While the size of the RBL market is unclear, it is estimated that a few hundred companies take such loans, with the cumulative size in the billions of dollars. Those lenders have marked down the perceived value for both oil and natural gas for the coming five years, with the changes kicking in as early as this month. Expected natural gas prices have been cut by around $0.50 per million British thermal units, about 20% below levels set in the spring. Industry sources are forecasting some firms face a 15% to 30% reduction in loan size as a result. Oil prices are expected to be about $1 to $2 lower than spring estimates. “Some banks believe they have too much energy exposure and want to reduce some of this risk,” said Ian Rainbolt, vice president of finance at Warwick Energy, a private equity firm with upstream investments in Oklahoma and Texas. That is a threat to smaller companies, which are already struggling to find other methods of financing – such as issuing stock or bonds – as investors grow restless with years of poor returns in the shale sector even as the United States has risen to become the world’s largest oil and gas producer. Investors are bracing for weak returns for the third quarter from shale producers due to lower oil and gas prices. Reduced funding could slow growth in U.S. oil and gas production, and also threaten more bankruptcies in the sector. Bankruptcy filings among U.S. oil and gas producers are at levels not seen since 2016, when U.S. crude slumped to $26 per barrel, according to law firm Haynes and Boone.

Is U.S. Shale Circling The Drain? — ‘Significant production slowdown’ is all around the headlines about the U.S. shale patch these days. Yet, the headlines have often missed one growing problem in the U.S. oil industry – the abandoned, or ‘orphaned’ wells that bankrupt oil and gas operators leave behind on private, state, and federal land. With companies gone bust, it’s the state or the federal government that must pick up the tab for plugging those abandoned wells, cleaning up the sites, and restore lands to as close to their original natural states as possible. The money set aside for reclaiming ‘orphan wells’ is not nearly enough to cover all the costs. Therefore, the well reclamation process is slow and increases the liabilities of the state and federal agencies responsible for cleaning up abandoned wells. This raises the risks of increasing costs for the taxpayer and of environmental disasters waiting to happen if unplugged abandoned wells start to leak. Before drilling, companies are required to pay bonds for wells reclamation in case the wells become orphan. But those bonds are insufficient to cover all the costs for reclaiming a well. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Is-US-Shale-Circling-The-Drain.htmlThe problem with orphan wells on state land is less acute than the one with abandoned wells on federal land. State legislatures can amend regulations to ask for higher bonding requirements from the industry, but the office responsible for cleaning up abandoned wells on federal land, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), must ask Washington for changes in legislation and requirements.“Between an industry already prone to booms-and-busts and signs of economic slowdown, regulators and legislatures are working to make sure taxpayers are not on the hook for further cleanup of the growing amount of abandoned and ‘orphaned’ oil and gas wells,” WORC said. Wyoming, for example, has had several thousand coal bed methane (CBM) wells orphaned by their owners since 2014 due to a plunge in natural gas prices, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (WOGCC). Since 2014, there have been 5,775 wells orphaned, and the WOGCC has removed from the orphan well list 2,618 orphaned wells on state and private lands, the WOGCC said in a September update. Before 2014, there were around 500 orphaned wells documented over a twenty-year period, and all of those have been plugged and abandoned.

Oilfield Services Firms Moving Beyond Oil, Gas Projects -Oilfield services firms will need to diversify in order to stay in the game during industry’s energy transition, according to energy research firm Rystad Energy.This is due in part to larger budget cuts in the upstream sector compared to the midstream sector, shifting the overall investment.“But beyond these obvious motivators, the shift is also a sign of something greater – namely, the energy transition,” Audun Martinsen, Rystad’s head of oilfield services research, said in an email sent to Rigzone. “Suppliers have begun embarking on a journey towards becoming broader energy service companies, sailing away from the oilfield services segment that propelled them in the past.”While non-upstream oil and gas activities represented 22 percent of revenues among service suppliers in 2014, that share grew to 27 percent in 2018. And Rystad expects that trend to grow in the next decade.“If pure-play contractors within drilling, well services and seismic – which don’t have much to offer outside the upstream oil and gas industry – are removed from the equation, activities outside of upstream accounted for nearly 30 percent of last year’s revenues,” Martinsen said.Companies like Saipem S.p.A. and Baker Hughes Company are moving past just oil and gas development projects into the renewable energy world.Rystad notes that after GE announced it would reduce its ownership share in Baker Hughes from 50.4 percent to 38 percent, Baker Hughes rebranded itself as an energy technology company.

Canada Countering Collapse in US Oil Imports From OPEC – With U.S. crude oil production up 150 percent to 12.4 million b/d since 2008, the great American shale boom has collapsed imports from OPEC. In 2018, OPEC met less than 15 percent of total U.S. oil demand, down from over 30 percent in 2007. Overall, U.S. imports from OPEC have sunk to their lowest levels since 1986. For the U.S., the reduction in imports from OPEC is widely viewed as an upgrade for energy security. Ever since the skyrocketing prices and long lines at gasoline stations caused by the OPEC oil embargo in the early-1970s, the U.S. has long sought to cut its dependence on such distant foreign oil. Moreover, more domestic crude and less need for OPEC has allowed the U.S. to put sanctions on the rogue leadership in the major producers Venezuela and Iran without spiking prices. Together, these sanctioned two are responsible for 6-8 percent of global supply, and all the while prices have remained “lower for longer.” Importantly, however, despite a declining need for Middle Eastern oil, the U.S. must still remain concerned about Iran’s threats on the critical Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. Some 20 percent of the world’s consumed oil passes through the Strait every day. Oil is the ultimate global commodity where prices around the world are inevitably linked, so an incident in that part of the world could still increase prices here in the U.S. Particularly with the U.S. oil export business set to soar to even greater heights, this global reality of oil interdependence explains why the U.S. would be better served to realistically seek to improve its energy security via more self-sufficiency rather than chasing “energy independence.” Indeed, with its heavier oil a match for the U.S. refining system, largest trading partner and firm ally Canada has filled in nicely for the fall of OPEC. In the shale-era since 2008, Canadian oil exports to the U.S. have almost doubled to 4.7 million b/d. Over the past four years, Canada alone has shipped more oil to the U.S. than all OPEC nations combined. Canada now meets nearly 25 percent of total U.S. oil demand, more than double its share from a decade ago. Canadian oil has benefitted the U.S. by compensating for the falling heavy oil production in longtime suppliers Mexico and Venezuela. It has been neighbor Canada that has helped supply those parts of the U.S. that are too distant to take-in the huge amounts of shale oil coming from Texas and North Dakota. The key exception here is California, where sea-borne shipments from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Colombia have come to replace Canada and dominate the market.

Oil sands found to be a leading source of air pollution in North America – A cloud of noxious particles brewing in the air above the Alberta oil sands is one of the most prolific sources of air pollution in North America, often exceeding the total emissions from Canada’s largest city, federal scientists have discovered.The finding marks the first time researchers have quantified the role of oil sands operations in generating secondary organic aerosols, a poorly understood class of pollutants that have been linked to a range of adverse health effects.The result adds to the known impact of the oil sands, including as a source of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. It also comes on the same day that the Bank of Canada delivered a sobering message about the country’s economy, saying the devastating Alberta wildfires that hit Fort McMurray – leading to production cuts in the oil industry and the destruction of thousands of buildings – will cause a drop in Canada’s gross domestic product in the second quarter.Given the economic circumstances and the political sensitivities currently surrounding the oil sands, the air pollutant study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offered the strongest test yet of the Trudeau government’s promise to allow scientists in federal labs to speak freely with journalists about their results.The pollutants the scientist measured are minute particles that are created when chemical-laden vapours from the mining and processing of bitumen react with oxygen in the atmosphere and are transformed into solids that can drift on the wind for days.While researchers have long thought that the oil sands must be a source of such particles, the new results show that their impact on air quality is significant and of potential concern to communities that are downwind.”It’s another aspect that can and probably should be considered” in assessing the oil sands’ environmental footprint, said John Liggio, an atmospheric chemist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and lead author of the study.

Canadian companies involved in upcoming Colombian fracking projects – In November, Colombian human rights defenders will speak in Ottawa, Vancouver and Nanaimo. What can we glean from mainstream media reports about Canadian corporations involved in the oil and gas sector in Colombia? What can we further discern about the companies that may have some involvement with the fracking pilot projects expected to start soon in that country? Additionally, what impact might their business activities have on human rights, the environment and the peace process in Colombia? Reuters has reported that “seven companies have put in bids for 11 oil exploration contracts in Colombia,” including Frontera Energy, Parex Resources, and Gran Tierra Energy. The article also notes CNE Oil and Gas as a qualified bidder. Let’s look more closely at those Canadian companies as a starting point.

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