Thursday Morning News, Views, And Links -- Part III -- Chesapeake Settles Lawsuit Within Hours

Dow futures are down a bit; oil is up almost a buck, up over $108 again, and yet war is far off. The dollar is weakening, I believe. Maybe later we will see how folks explain the rise in the price of oil despite huge supplies. Libya?

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I reported this story yesterday; this is the Rigzone/Reuter perspective:

The Obama administration on Wednesday authorized natural gas exports from a fourth U.S. facility, speeding up a review process that would-be gas exporters and their allies in Congress had criticized as too slow.
Dominion Resource Inc's conditional permit for liquefied natural gas exports from its Cove Point terminal on Maryland's Chesapeake Bay came just over a month after the Energy Department approved exports from a terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Dominion's was the fourth natural gas export permit issued by the administration. It was the third permit issued this year, following a pause of nearly two years in review of applications to export gas to all but a handful of countries covered by free trade agreements.

The first linked story will eventually get you to a nice CarpeDiem graphic on the price of natural gas around the world. 

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The news gets better: Chevron says LNG global market will get tighter, even as Chinese sales fall.

The liquefied natural gas market looks to be tight in the years ahead given a shortage of new projects lined up, partly due to rising costs as demand for contractors to do the work has surged, Chevron Corp's vice chairman said on Wednesday.

Some Australian LNG export capacity already has been scrapped, while Chevron was forced to add $15 billion to the price tag for its huge Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia.

"The rising costs of contracting will impact the economics of projects, and could temper the industry's willingness to invest," George Kirkland, who runs the U.S. company's oil and gas production arm, said of the industry in general. "The supply is there. Really the question then becomes: can we bring it to market?"

Very, very interesting, to say the least.

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At least some folks "down under" can now open their bottles of champagne. IceAgeNow is reporting that the Australians are taking an ice pick to their "green" agenda. 

Some programs to be totally abolished.

“PUBLIC servants are drawing up plans to collapse 33 climate change schemes run by seven departments and eight agencies into just three bodies run by two departments under a substantial rewrite of the administration of carbon abatement schemes under the Coalition,” says this article in the Australian.

Coalition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt, who briefed public servants on the dramatic restructure of the federal climate change bureaucracy before the election was called, yesterday confirmed the Coalition was committed to proceeding with the plan.

The move is forecast to save the government tens of millions of dollars.

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This article, sent to me by Don, is very, very interesting. I remember posting this story two or three years ago when elsewhere they were all concerned about how much natural gas was being wasted in North Dakota. I would love to find that original post, but it might prove difficult, but I believe I was the first "blog" to post the news that Chesapeake was going to charge mineral rights owners for gathering, processing, transporting natural gas. I thought that was ludicrous. No one commented, and the folks over at the Bakken Shale Discussion Group were fixated on Mr Helms and completely missed that story or so it seemed to me. Well, as usual, I was ahead of the curve. Reuters is reporting that the courts have ruled that Chesapeake overcharged mineral owners for gathering, processing, and transporting natural gas, and they needed to be reimbursed.

Chesapeake Energy Corp  has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with Pennsylvania landowners who said the natural gas producer was deducting large fees from their royalty checks. 

Chesapeake, the largest natural gas operator in the state, settled the lawsuit within hours of its filing with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on August 30. On Wednesday, Chesapeake's lawyer submitted the proposed wording of a court order that would approve the settlement, which is expected by the end of the year.

Reuters reported on August 28 that Chesapeake started this year to take much heavier deductions from royalty checks it sends Pennsylvania landowners to help pay to gather, compress, market and transport natural gas, in most cases cutting compensation by more than half.

How strong was the case? Chesapeake settled the case "within hours.

Wow, here the related posts are:

• Cash crunch at Chesapeake
• Strange story coming out of Chesapeake

I see I even have a tag for this story: Barnett_CHK_TransportationCosts.

What a great blog. LOL. As Mr T told me a long time ago: this blog is complete nonsense. But it's still standing.

This will be posted as a stand-alone post. It's an important story on so many levels.

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Question: why no anti-Obama-war protests?

Anti-Vietnam Theme Song, Country Joe
Answer: the president has become irrelevant, on so many levels.