Northern Gas Pipelines was born in 2001.  In 2003, our publisher joined the Regulatory Commission of Alaska for the five-year remaining term of a departing commissioner.  In 2008 he created this new webpage, linked to the archives of the old (Search both archives by entering search terms in the upper left column).  On October 3, 2011, he once again took leave from the gentle readership to fulfill a public sector assignment.  Readers will find regular entries of links below that maintain the chronology of the archives, but no new editorial commentary until this week.  On December 16, 2011, the author completed that assignment and today he once again resumes control of this webpage.  -dh 

Nunavut – Scoop It.  The Shtokman field, one of the biggest natural gas fields in the world, is located way up north in the Barents Sea, 650 kilometers north of the Kola Peninsula on the northwest coast of Russia.  The gas company behind Shtokman — owned by Russia’s Gazprom, French Total and Norwegian Statoil — expects to make a final decision in December or January on whether to invest tens of billions in the gas field. The gas will be extracted from the sea and transported to the small Russian fishing village of Teriberka, where a gas plant will be built.  From there the gas will be sent south to the large Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, and then on to the European market. Portions of the gas will be cooled and shipped via the Northern Sea Route to Asia.  According to Shtokman, there are 3.9 trillion cubic meters of gas in the Barents Sea north of the Kola Peninsula. That’s enough to provide the entire world with gas for a year. The gas field was discovered several years ago. The gas companies’ investment would be $36.2 billion, with the Shtokman field up and running in 2016.  (Also, Dispatch)

 

 

ADN/AP By NATALIYA VASILYEVA.  Rescue workers are searching for 49 men in freezing, remote waters off Russia’s east coast after their oil rig capsized and sank amid fierce storms.

 

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel was attacked for the 10th time since the beginning of the year.  Sunday’s attack did not stop the flow of gas on the line near El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula because it had not yet been restarted following an attack on Nov. 28. The explosion reportedly was detonated by remote control.