The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2019
Mr. Cuomo wants to make New York ground zero in the left’s plan to purge fossil fuels. First he banned shale fracking in southern New York despite its huge potential to boost local economies. Then he blocked a natural-gas pipeline from Pennsylvania that would have reduced energy bills and reliance on heating oil.
As a coup de grâce, in May he vetoed another pipeline to bring natural gas to Long Island from New Jersey. National Grid, which provides natural gas on Long Island, responded rationally by imposing a moratorium on natural-gas hookups to prevent supply disruptions when demand spikes in the winter.
This essentially stranded tens of thousands of folks waiting for gas hookups, including more than a thousand who had deactivated their service after moving or renovating. Apparently Mr. Cuomo didn’t understand that the result of his pipeline blockade was to force residents to use more expensive and less-efficient electric appliances for space and water heating.
Our take: “Consider this another parable of how the political campaign to ban fossil fuels is detached from energy and economic reality.” Meanwhile, as winter looms just around the corner, let’s remember Headlamp’s go-to slogan: Markets, not Mandates.
Alaska regulators taking public comment on possible oil spill plan changes
Becky Bohrer, KTOO, October 19, 2019
Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the state of Alaska is looking at whether to change its requirements for oil spill prevention and response plans.
State Environmental Conservation Commissioner Jason Brune said there’s no intent to do away with the plans. He said the department wants to make sure the rules are not outdated.
Brune said he has heard from many Alaskans that contingency plans “are unnecessarily burdensome while lacking corresponding environmental benefits.”
Successful test aboard ‘Norwegian Cinderella’ holds promising future for automated offshore rigs
Sergio Chapa, Houston Chronicle, October 21, 2019
Houston oilfield service company Baker Hughes and the Norwegian energy company Equinor successfully tested automated and remote-controlled systems that were recently installed aboard the Askepott, an offshore drilling rig named after the Norwegian version of the fairy tale princess Cinderella.
Tasks such as cementing, fluid engineering and directional drilling can now be performed remotely by an operator working out of a control center miles away in the coastal city of Tananger. Connected to Askepott by an underwater fiber optic cable, Baker Hughes staff have performed their first cementing jobs via remote control on a pair of oil wells in the North Sea’s Oseberg field.
Our take: Increased safety, increased efficiency, no jobs lost… What’s not to like! Bravo Baker Hughes and Equinor!
Big U.S. liquefied natgas players move fast; smaller ones try to keep up
Scott DiSavino & Sabina Zawadzki, Reuters, October 17, 2019
A gap is emerging in the U.S. liquefied natural gas industry as big players such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Cheniere Energy Inc race ahead to build export terminals with fewer long-term contracts, while smaller developers struggle to find financing for their first plants.
[The LNG trade] is changing. As the market grows and pricing mechanisms diversify, some buyers do not want to commit to 20-year contracts. The growing prowess of oil majors such as Exxon and recent entrants such as Cheniere and trading houses means there are aggregators that can supply buyers more flexibly, making it harder for smaller players.
From the Daily on Energy:
RENEWABLES ON THE RISE: Total global renewable power is set to more than double in the next five years, the International Energy Agency says in a new report out Monday. In fact, IEA projects an increase of 1,200 gigawatts by 2024, an amount equal to all the power capacity in the U.S. currently.
enewables’ doubling will be driven largely by increasing solar power — with China set to take over with the world’s largest solar PV capacity. Overall costs for solar and wind will continue to tumble, too, the IEA says.
Putting the numbers in perspective: A doubling in global renewable capacity isn’t as ambitious as it sounds. According to the IEA, the huge growth it projects in solar PV through 2024 represents a mere 6% of the technology’s total potential worldwide.
And the renewables’ growth IEA projects isn’t nearly enough to meet global climate goals. “Renewables are already the world’s largest source of electricity, but their deployment still needs to accelerate if we are to achieve long-term climate, air quality, and energy access goals,” Fatih Birol, IEA’s executive director, said in a statement.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he intends to pick Joshua Kindred, a former oil industry attorney, as a new U.S. District Court judge for Alaska. Kindred works as a lawyer in Anchorage for the U.S. Department of Interior. Before that, he was regulatory and legal affairs manager for the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, an industry group that sometimes participates in lawsuits to defend oil development in federal court. Kindred has also worked as a state prosecutor.
Santos Ltd. agreed to buy ConocoPhillips’ northern Australia business for $1.4 billion in a deal that will boost the Adelaide-based oil and gas producer’s position in the growing Asian liquefied natural gas market. The transaction may allow Santos to become the country’s largest independent energy producer and capitalize on a push by Asian consumers, including China, to switch to cleaner burning natural gas away from coal. Conoco is selling its operating interests in the Darwin LNG processing plant and the Bayu-Undan, Barossa and Poseidon gas fields. Conoco is the second U.S. energy major to announce plans to sell down its interests in Australia after Exxon Mobil Corp. in September said it would start a process to find a buyer for its Bass Strait producing assets off the coast of southeast Australia. Conoco completed the sale of its stake in the Greater Sunrise field to Timor-Leste’s government for $350 million earlier this year, and the Santos deal will free up capital to invest in U.S. shale and return cash to shareholders, two of its priorities in recent years.
The company developing one of the largest oil prospects on the North Slope has applied with state regulators to change its plans and start producing oil a year early. Oil Search Alaska submitted a modification to its July 2019 Plan of Operations for its Nanushuk project in the Pikka Unit on Sept. 26 with the Division of Oil and Gas. The amended plan calls for some changes to the layout and size of the project’s three drill sites near the Colville River delta and moving the tie-in pad that will connect to ConocoPhillips’ Kuparuk River Unit that will link the project’s pipelines to the rest of Slope oil infrastructure at a site that won’t interfere with existing operations.
Rebecca Wilmarth can see the empty school building across her lawn in Red Devil, Alaska. It shut down in 2009, and for a while, willows and alders shrouded it from view. Wildland firefighters recently cut them back to reveal a brown building with blue trim. For a place that’s been abandoned for ten years, it appeared in remarkably good shape. For Wilmarth, it’s a symbol of what was lost after the Red Devil mercury mine shut down in the 1970s. “It was like a domino effect of things that made this place so deserted. The school closed. Families had no other option but to relocate or send their kids somewhere else.” Wilmarth said. Red Devil is a tiny town with about 20 remaining residents. A mercury mine that built the town used to operate 3 miles away. But once it shut down, people started leaving for other jobs. Now Red Devil has no health clinic and no store. It doesn’t have a tribal council or city government. A handful of residents are fighting to get basic services back.
