| 3/14/2014 | 03/14/2013 | 03/14/2012 | 03/14/2011 | 03/14/2010 | |
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| Active Rigs | 190 | 187 | 203 | 174 | 104 |
As soon as weather permits construction will get underway on a new mixed use subdivision in north Williston. The Spring Lake Village subdivision is located three blocks north of Walmart on the east side of US Highways 2 and 85. The development is approximately 85 acres in size and will provide a variety of commercial and residential services. Williston resident Ronica Branson-Harger is the Project Manager for the Spring Lake Village.The new rec center on the east side of town, near the college, is going to be a game-changer.
Edison International and Sempra Energy utilities in Southern California were cleared to buy as much as 1,500 megawatts of electricity to replace the power lost when the San Onofre nuclear plant shut in 2012.
Sempra’s San Diego Gas & Electric Co. was authorized by the California Public Utilities Commission today to secure 500 to 800 megawatts, with at least 175 coming from “preferred resources” such as solar, wind and energy-efficient sources and 25 from energy storage. [175/800 = 22%; and that's about the state mandate.]
Edison’s Southern California Edison in Rosemead was approved for 500 to 700 megawatts, with at least 400 from preferred sources. Environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club had argued that all additional power should come from renewables and other clean sources, saying the alternative would lead to more emissions-intensive power such as that produced by natural gas-fired plants.
“I wish we could do 100 percent preferred resources,” Michael Peevey, president of the commission, said at the panel’s meeting in San Francisco today. “We just don’t have it in the timeframe necessary to ensure economic well-being, prosperity and keeping the lights on in Southern California.”The market is flat, slightly negative, and yet a fair number of energy-related stocks, especially utilities are doing very, very well. Nothing like a cold winter, a cold war, and cold reality to help the utilities:
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate reported Monday that Statoil has drilled a dry well north of the Fram field in the North Sea. The NPD said that Statoil is in the process of concluding the drilling of the wildcat well (35/11-16S). The well was drilled approximately 3.5 miles north of the Fram field in the northern North Sea, and around 80 miles northwest of Bergen.
It was drilled from production license 248C with the exploration target situated in license 090B. Its objective was to prove petroleum in Upper Jurassic reservoir rocks.I doubt these wells are inexpensive.
The Department of Mineral Resources Oil and Gas Division began advising operators on Monday to shut down wells that at risk and move equipment and chemical containers in anticipation of possible flooding.
About 50 wells are in the area that’s being monitored, said spokeswoman Alison Ritter. Twenty-two wells cannot be accessed by road due to water on the roads, and seven wells have water on the well site, Ritter said.
President Barack Obama's former national security adviser says he should approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline as a matter of national security.
Retired Gen. James Jones tells the Senate Foreign Relations that approving the pipeline would send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other "international bullies" that they cannot use energy security as a weapon. Jones says rejection of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline would "make Mr. Putin's day and strengthen his hand."
The Senate panel is holding its first hearing on the pipeline five years after it was proposed as Democrats wrestle with its impact on the outcome of next fall's election.
Rich Democratic donors are funding candidates who oppose the project while the party's continued control of the Senate may hinge on re-electing the pipeline's biggest supporters.It will have zero impact on the election. This is all about keeping people's minds off ObamaCare.
MHR’s 2013 annual results boasted a doubling in market cap since June. This leap followed a difficult period that began for many US shale-focused companies in the middle of 2012, where MHR’s share price fell from US$6.41 to US$4.18 in 3 months and moved further towards $3.50 until June 2013.
The MHR shareholders will be hoping this rise in market cap is sustainable, unlike a similar rise between Q3 2011 and Q1 2012 that eventually led to a fall. Whilst the share price continued to trend downwards in this year between June 2012 and June 2013, the company’s daily production actually went in the opposite direction, proving that a rise in production in isolation is not necessarily a good thing for an oil and gas company shareholder.Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read at this site, or think you may have possibly read at this site.
The rise in share price and market cap in 2013 came after a big sale in the Eagle Ford shale in Texas; MHR sold its holdings in Gonzalo and Lavaca counties for $401 million in April to Penn Virginia (NYSE:PVA). MHR completed its exit from the play in early 2014 with the $24 million sale of its remaining Eagle Ford acreage to New Standard Energy (ASX:NSE). This was in some ways a surprising move as the Eagle Ford has been the most active shale play in terms of companies acquiring new or bolstering existing acreage positions over the last few years; MHR is almost unique (especially for a company of its size) in actually leaving the play to focus its efforts elsewhere, but the rise in share price is proof that the market welcomed the move.
The exit from the Eagle Ford, around $100 million of other sales in the year and further planned non-core divestitures of over $400 million have allowed Magnum Hunter to focus its investment plans on its core plays, the Bakken in North Dakota and the Marcellus and Utica plays in the Appalachian basin.
BP as agreed to take 80 percent capacity of a new $360 million mini-refinery in Houston that will refine just enough crude oil to avoid the restrictions that are placed on exporting crude oil out of the U.S.
This is happening as pressure mounts from the oil industry on President Barack Obama to end the ban on exports, which is now 41 years old. [Won't happen in this administration; and won't happen in my investing lifetime.]
There has lately been a large influx of crude oil due to new technologies and refineries are finding themselves with a surplus that the U.S. market is not absorbing. Many have begun transforming the product into other things that can be exported, such as propane gas.
"It's a relatively inexpensive way around the export prohibition," said Judith Dwarkin, chief energy economist for ITG Investment Research Inc. "You can lightly ruffle the hydrocarbons and they are considered processed and then they aren't subject to the ban."
According to Bloomberg, the shale-oil boom in the U.S. is raising production of crude oil to levels that haven't been seen since 26 years ago. U.S. imports have been cut, affecting prices in the Middle East market.
South Korea plans to construct the world's fourth largest oil hub as it aims to become a major oil trading post with a total capacity of 56.6 million barrels, South Korea's largest news outlet Yonhap News Agency reported. South Korea began expanding its number of oil storage facilities by opening a location in Yeosu in 2013 with the capacity to hold up to 8.2 million barrels of oil.Hmmmm....with all the stories on wind and solar one would have thought South Korea would be moving toward renewables by now.
| 3/14/2014 | 03/14/2013 | 03/14/2012 | 03/14/2011 | 03/14/2010 | |
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| Active Rigs | 190 | 187 | 203 | 174 | 104 |
Despite some recent rain and snow, California continues to experience a historic drought that will further reduce the state’s hydroelectric output and again increase demand for natural gas for power generation. But the drought is only part of the story. California needs to replace the megawatts once provided by the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear station, and specifically needs flexible gas-fired capacity to back up the intermittent production from the state’s new solar facilities and wind farms. The resulting gas shortages have led to generators being exposed to massive swings in gas prices this winter and facing higher prices this summer. Today we examine the growing connection between gas use and rain, snow, sun and wind in the Golden State.
Hydropower is big on the West Coast. In Part 1 of our series, Who Stopped the Rain?, we saw how natural gas plays second fiddle to hydro in the Pacific Northwest, especially in Oregon and Washington State, where a series of federally owned dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers generate more than half of the states’ annual electricity needs. That episode also discussed how, in relatively dry years the use of gas-fired power plants increases to fill the gap left by water-starved hydro plants. In Part 2, we looked at other forces driving increased gas use in the Pacific Northwest, including the development of new gas-fired power plants to replace coal units being taken offline and to keep pace with load growth. We also explored the new pipeline infrastructure being developed to move more gas from western Canada and the US Rockies to the increasingly gas-dependent region. Now we take a look at California.
Meantime, Southern California’s gas-delivery infrastructure has been showing signs of strain this winter. Due to unusually cold weather (cold for Los Angeles, that is) and resulting shortfalls in gas supplies in early December, SoCalGas twice asked its customers to reduce their gas use. And on February 6, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which oversees the state’s electric grid, issued a rare, statewide “Flex Alert”—this time urging electricity conservation due to “a shortage of natural gas triggered by extreme cold weather in much of the United States and Canada.” CAISO said the shortage was “impacting fuel supplies to southern California power plants and reducing electricity generation” in the gas-dependent region. According to reports filed by generators with the FERC in early March requesting waivers to recover their costs (see FERC Docket ER14-1428), California generators have been exposed to massive swings in gas prices and to the need to procure gas on short notice, without any assurance that they will be paid by CAISO for their actual costs of production.
These shortages of gas for power generation in the winter months when California demand is normally lower do not portend well for the coming summer season. With the drought reducing hydro output and demand for gas up to help fill the SONGS gap California gas supplies are expected to remain tight. Forward prices for the summer strip (average of April through October) at Pacific Gas & Electric City Gates have traded at more than $0.50 /MMBtu above the CME NYMEX Henry Hub, LA benchmark this month (March), double the basis seen a year ago in 2013.
In sum, the interplay between hydro and gas in California is a long-running phenomenon that is becoming more complex due to the continuing drought, the new gas-fired generation that has been coming online, and gas’s increasing role as a “balancer” to offset the variable output of solar and wind projects. Add to that the need to beef up some elements of southern California’s gas pipeline infrastructure and the sheer size of California’s gas market and you get a situation worth following. We’ll do that as those pipeline plans unfold.
