News We Will Be Reading Thursday -- September 17, 2014; Natural Gas As Feeder Stock For Ethylene, Other Products; An Update On Buckeye Partners

Rigzone is reporting:

Houston-based logistic firm Buckeye Partners has spent more than $3.5 billion buying assets since 2010, transforming itself from a quiet regional pipeline utility into an emerging energy powerhouse.

But the acquisition that may best symbolize its evolution is one the company didn't tout to investors this summer: a Washington lobbyist.

After spending most of the past century pumping fuel from one place to another, the 128-year-old company has become a key player in the import and export of North American oil, with an unrivalled network of East Coast and Caribbean fuel depots and an expanding business loading crude oil from trains to tankers.

On Tuesday it closed an $860 million deal to buy a crude oil and condensate terminal in Corpus Christi, Texas, a big bet on the future expansion of crude exports from the Gulf Coast.

The spending spree has made Buckeye one of a handful of midstream energy companies whose operations touch nearly every major oil-policy issue being debated in Washington, from oil-by-rail transportation to the ban on U.S. crude exports and the Jones Act shipping law that requires use of costly U.S. oil tankers to carry American crude to domestic refiners.

Much more at the link.

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Rigzone is reporting:

A California-based company claims that it has found a commercially viable technique to directly convert natural gas into liquid fuels or petrochemical building blocks.

"Natural gas is the next logical step for the energy and chemistry industry," said Rahul Iyer, vice president of corporate development with Siluria Technologies, which is partnering with world-class refining and petrochemical companies to roll out its catalytic processes for producing ethylene and liquid hydrocarbon fuels or fuel blend stocks.

Last month, Siluria announced that it raised nearly more than $30 million in a financing led by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV) – the venture investment arm of Saudi Arabia's national oil company – in its fourth stage of financing, also known as a Series D financing round.

In addition to SAEV, Siluria has partnered with Brazil-based petchem manufacturer Braskem and the German-headquartered gases and engineering firm The Linde Group to commercialize its oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) processes.

Neither the OCM concept nor the quest to make it commercially viable is new, but Siluria is confident that it has found the right ingredients – and the right partners – to achieve an outcome that has eluded others for decades.

"It’s an abundant, clean feedstock and economically viable supplies are expanding," Iyer said of natural gas. "The problem has been that we haven’t had the technology to take full advantage of it. It is mostly burned or consumed as a direct fuel. By using our proprietary catalytic processes, we can change the outlook for gas to benefit producers, fuel and chemical makers and consumers."

The Wall Street Journal

Now, back to "boots on the ground" -- yesterday

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Wow -- General Mills profit drops 25% -- profit plunges 25% on anemic demand for breakfast cereal and other traditional packaged foods

FedEx profit rises 24%

Dow closes at record

Diamond prices continue to fall

The Los Angeles Times

Texas executes woman after Supreme Court denies last-minute appeal

Man charged with several fatal shootings in San Fernando Valley smiles in court as victim's family watches; apparently not facing death sentence in California; free medical care for the rest of his life, possible; no wonder he's smiling

2014 on track to be California's hottest year on record

Audi gets first permit to test self-driving cars on California roads