Tuesday Morning Links: NGLS In The Northeast To Surge

Wells coming off the confidential list have been posted; scroll down a few posts.

Active rigs: up to 188 189. 190. I posted 188 one minute ago, and thought I better check again, and there it is, up another rig. Steady, but trending up. Just before closing out this post, I checked again: rigs up to 190.

The Fairfield SunTimes is reporting on new technology to remove sulfur from natural gas. The process started with figuring out a way to remove CO2 without using water. The article notes that the researchers found the "sweet spot" (pun intended) when the water-free solvent was even more effective at capturing hydrogen sulfide.

RBN Energy: big surge comes to Whoville -- northeast NGLs to increase six-fold.

A few months back we introduced Whoville, the emerging NGL hub in a small corner of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  Now that hub is coming on like gangbusters.  Between now and 2015 nearly 4.7 Bcf/d of additional cryogenic natural gas processing capacity is due to come online along with 500 Mb/d of fractionation capacity and 500 Mb/d of NGL pipeline takeaway capacity to support growing Utica and wet Marcellus production.  As a result, NGL production from the Northeast is due to exceed 400 Mb/d by 2015, a six fold surge from EIA’s 63 Mb/d February production number.  In today’s blog, we examine growing Northeast NGLs production.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

• How libraries are adapting to a "new world"

Section C (Money & Investing):

Section B (Marketplace):

• Continental Resources/Hiland Double HH pipeline project: $300 million. 

Section A:

• Marines protect endangered tortoises.

Mr. Henen, who has a doctorate in biology, is part of a little-known army of biologists and other scientists who manage the Mojave desert tortoise and about 420 other threatened and endangered species on about 28 million acres of federally managed military land.

"There's a lot of people who don't recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does," said Martin Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. "A lot of people think we're just running over things."

Instead, Mr. Henen often hustles out to remote parts of the Mojave Desert to make sure the threatened desert tortoise, which can weigh 10 pounds and live to be more than 50 years old, isn't frightened by charging troops.

"When they get scared, they pee themselves," Mr. Henen said, referring to the tortoises. Since tortoises can go two years between drinks of water, an unplanned micturition can cause dehydration and even death. So Mr. Henen sometimes demonstrates to troops how he soaks the reptiles in a pool until they drink enough water to plod on with their lives.

• Add China to the list of countries rushing to the Arctic for its oil. We talked about this earlier: how the US is ceding control of the Arctic to the Russians, Canadians, Danes, Brits, the Chinese, and, before it's over, the Maldives, I suppose. The US has no policy on the Arctic. President Obama is still studying the issue; the last policy expired just as he was taking office. It's been five years. My hunch is this will be unfinished business on January 20, 2017.
• Op-Ed: Kissinger asks if the US needs a foreign policy? Obama does not feel a foreign policy is necessary. When one is in campaign mode 24/7, there's not much time to govern.

• Angola looks to China as sales of oil to US fall. 

From twitter:

• FBI can read e-mails older than six months without a warrant. Cue up Connie Francis.

Emails are not private. A message may have one sender and one recipient but it can, with little effort, be read by a third party. In fact, despite the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unlawful searches, federal agencies do not necessarily need a warrant to read emails older than six months.

Concerns over such government snooping were raised by the American Civil Liberties Union, which last week noted a “troubling picture” of email surveillance practices by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. The agencies may be taking advantage of a component of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which requires warrants only for emails that have been stored on a third-party server for less than 180 days.