The Tuesday Before Thanksgiving; Marathon Partners With Enbridge On Sandpiper; Huge Setback For California High Speed Rail

Big story in Clearbrooks News: Marathon agrees to partner on Enbridge's Sandpiper

Important story being reported at Rigzone, from Reuters:

China is likely to see natural gas shortages every winter until the end of the decade as domestic production fails to keep up with demand, a factor likely to drive global liquefied natural gas prices higher, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie said in a report released on Friday. 

Also, at Rigzone, Baker Hughes resumes operations in Iraq after recent protest; Schlumberger resumed operations last week, or thereabouts.

Active rigs: 187

RBN Energy: it appears that Alaska's once-dominant role in US energy will continue to slip.

Alaska officials, concerned the state’s once-dominant role in U.S. energy production will continue slipping, are taking a fresh look at helping to jump-start a combined natural gas treatment plant, gas pipeline and LNG export project that would free vast volumes of natural gas now stranded at the state’s North Slope. A new study commissioned by the state found that it could make sense for Alaska to take a 20% or higher equity stake in the project, but that there are significant risks the state would need to mitigate. Today we look at whether the 49th state can make a long-stalled plan by producers to move North Slope gas to market a reality by the mid-2020s.

Trouble in the renewable energy arena:

Biofuel Energy issues statement in announced sale of plants: Co confirms that is has been notified by the lenders under its existing senior secured credit facility that they have exercised their right under their Deed In Lieu of Foreclosure Agreement to acquire the Company's ethanol plants. 

The Wall Street Journal

Trouble in the land of fruits and nuts: judge deals setback to California rail project. 

A judge dealt a blow to California's plan to build the first U.S. high-speed bullet train in two separate rulings Monday, halting the sale of more than $8 billion in bonds and sending the state back to the drawing board on its funding plan. The $68 billion rail line, which would allow travelers to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours, has been in the planning stages for years.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled in one lawsuit that he could find "no evidence in the record" that it was "necessary and desirable" for the state to issue the bonds.

Completely off my radar scope:

With an average 2.01 children born to every woman, France boasts the highest birthrate in the European Union after Ireland and, in recent years, has been producing babies at rates not seen in the country since the 1970s.

The ratio is a source of national policy pride: While Europe's overall population is projected to decline in the coming decades, France's is expected to grow, providing a more stable group of working adults to help support both the young and old. France has achieved its mini baby boom with some of Europe's most generous subsidies for families, as well as child-care access.

Spending on family policy—including subsidies, tax breaks for parents and state-funded help for housing—equals nearly 4% of the country's gross domestic product, the highest ratio among the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's 34 industrialized member countries and nearly double the 2.2% average.

But Bousignies's financial challenges provide a window into the flip side of France's baby surge.

More babies, children and students need nurseries, schools and universities—infrastructure the French government is increasingly struggling to finance off a deficit-ridden budget. Many young adults remain under direct state assistance—through an array of social security allowances— because the country isn't creating enough jobs. A new financial-support program to assist as many as 100,000 unemployed youth is projected to cost up to €600 million a year.

And then this, predictable:

French business confidence stagnated in November as an improvement in recent activity was offset by concerns about the future, France's official statistics agency Insee said. Insee's report on Monday heightens concerns that the performance of the euro zone's second-largest economy will lag behind the fledgling recovery in the currency bloc as a whole.