9-16-14

Consumer Energy Alliance Energy Links:

Radio America: Neal Asbury’s Made in America *Michael Whatley Interview (NGP Photo)
 
Pipeline International: The Gulf Coast Pipeline System: a catalyst for American jobs and energy security *CEA Mention
In just the past decade, the North American energy industry has undergone a rapid transformation. Thanks to technological advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, oil and gas production has surged from previously untapped US shale rock formations, with the International Energy Agency predicting that the US will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s top producer of oil by 2016.
 
 

Wisconsin State Journal: Time to approve Keystone XL Pipeline
This month marks six years since TransCanada applied for the presidential permit needed to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is still unapproved.
 
Haynesville.com: EDITORIAL: Keystone XL pipeline marks six years of stagnation
An executive order on immigration isn’t the only thing that President Obama has put off until after the November election. The fate of the Keystone XL pipeline will apparently remain where it has languished for the past six years — on the undecided list.
 
Rapid City Journal: Newsmaker Q&A: Paul Seamans, opponent of Keystone XL pipeline
As the company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline prepares to reapply for permits in South Dakota, a bevy of opponents, from environmental advocates to Native American tribes, are pledging to fight back.
 
Cape Coral Daily-Breeze: Build the pipeline
It has been almost six years since backers of the Keystone XL Pipeline first submitted an application to the U.S. State Department on Sept. 19, 2008, to build this energy infrastructure project and bring jobs and greater energy security to America.
 
Platts: API says White House seeking to raise RFS volumes to stimulate E85, E15 sales
The American Petroleum Institute on Thursday said it has gotten indication from the Obama administration that it intends to raise the Renewable Fuel Standard biofuels mandate in order to push production and sales of higher ethanol blends, such as E85 and E15.
 
Bloomberg BNA: EPA Power Plant Proposal Could Fast-Track Natural Gas Pipeline Projects, S&P Says
The Environmental Protection Agency's recently proposed regulations for cutting carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's existing power plants could help fast-track construction of new natural gas pipelines, according to Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.
 
Washington Examiner: States to EPA: We need more time for power plant rule comments
Officials from six states want the Environmental Protection Agency to extend the comment period for its proposed carbon emissions regulation for power plants.
 
Longview News-Journal: Editorial: Cleaning up power plants is going to take cooperation
Here’s something many Americans don’t understand: In a vast number of places around the world, when you flip a power switch, nothing happens.
 
Political News: Boozman Requests Extended Comment Period for EPA's Carbon Emissions Rule
Boozman called on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to provide a 60-day extension for the public comment period on EPA’s radical plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
 
State Journal: Arch CEO: power plant retirements ‘bad business, bad policy'
International markets are the growth opportunity for U.S.-based coal companies as Environmental Protection Agency regulations cut back the use of coal in power plants, the CEO of Arch Coal said at a recent conference.
 
Environment & Energy Publishing: Solar storms add to growing list of pressing issues for reliability monitor
A government warning yesterday of a possible threat to the nation's power grid from an approaching solar geomagnetic pulse punctuated a high-level Washington conference on the phalanx of challenges that confront the nation's electric power sector, from space weather to coal-plant retirements.
 
Wall Street Journal:  Hydraulic Fracturing Gives U.S. Energy Boom Plenty of Room to Run
Skeptics of the U.S. energy boom say it can't last much longer because it requires drilling an ever-increasing number of wells. But the boom already has lasted longer than anyone would have imagined just a decade ago and has more room to run. That's because oil and natural-gas wells have become more productive—an unrecognized but potent trend that should keep the fuels flowing.
 
Arkansas Business: Fayetteville Takes Arkansas from Zero to Billions in 10 Years
Arkansas was already a gas-producing state with the storied Arkoma Basin routinely producing 150 million to 175 million MCF (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas every year. But the Fayetteville Shale brought gas production on steroids, producing more than a billion MCF a year for the past two years while Arkoma production has dropped to barely 100 million MCF.
 
Arkansas Business: Natural Gas Severance Tax Collections 150 Times Larger
Development of the Fayetteville Shale Play, and especially the damage that heavy drilling equipment caused to sleepy county roadways, provided the political cover needed to raise Arkansas’ severance tax on natural gas for the first time in more than 50 years.
 
Imperial Valley News: Study assesses the environmental costs and benefits of HF
Stanford, California- A strange thing happened on the way to dealing with climate change: Advances in hydraulic fracturing put trillions of dollars' worth of previously unreachable oil and natural gas within humanity's grasp.
 
Greeley Post Springs Independent: Experts studying West Salt Creek landslide
Much speculation has surrounded the proximity of the well pad to the slide, especially with the use of hydraulic fracturing. All experts concluded there was no connection between the oil and gas activity in the area and the slide. In particular the geologist point to the obvious fact that the drilling occurred 5,000 to 8,000 feet into the Wasatch formation, while the slide occurred roughly 2,000 feet higher up the side of the Mesa.
 
The Times: IDOT hiring shines spotlight on political hiring
The pitiful thing about a recent inspector general report on hiring at the Illinois Department of Transportation is that, despite decades of outside legal action and the creation of an entire bureaucracy designed to enforce ethical behavior in state government, it showed that there are still barriers in place for qualified people wanting to work.
 
The Southern: Learning to play the patronage game
Tuesday marks the first day a legislative panel will review a set of rules regulating hydraulic fracturing in Illinois. Members of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will debate whether the Illinois Department of Natural Resources overstepped its authority in writing the rules.
 
Huffington Post: Planned Tuscaloosa Marine Shale lodges akin to man camps elsewhere
Oil and gas companies use on-site trailers and rent blocks of hotel rooms to house workers engaged in fracking the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale deposit. As oilfield and service staff reach a critical mass, particularly in southwest Mississippi, communities want to build crew lodges for them.
 
Las Vegas Review Journal: Drill, baby, drill
Ohio and other states are following the lead of North Dakota, where the energy boom literally remade the state in just a few years. Nevada officials are smartly getting on board, recognizing that hydraulic fracturing could diversify and rapidly grow the Silver State’s economy.
 
Associated Press: Groups aim to help N.C. Democrats
Environmental groups this past spring already ran TV ads criticizing several GOP lawmakers for votes on hydraulic fracturing and landfills. With U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan framing her re-election bid as a referendum on the legislature and Republican challenger state House Speaker Thom Tillis, people who support Democrats have more reasons for optimism.
 
WNCN: Hundreds cram last NC HF hearing in west
North Carolina officials hear more worries that opening the state to drilling for natural gas will leave water wells polluted by toxic chemicals. Local media report about 600 people attended a lengthy public hearing Friday at Western Carolina University. Most speakers complained regulations on hydraulic fracturing won't protect the public health.
 
Associated Press: ND oil boomtown of Williston approves $250M budget
The oil boomtown of Williston has approved the largest budget in the city's history, fivefold what it was four years earlier. Williston's city commission approved the $250 million budget for 2015 on Tuesday.
 
StateImpact PA: Industry’s hiring practices raise ire
Dave Spigelmyer, who heads the industry group the Marcellus Shale Coalition, says gas companies are committed to hiring locally. “We will continue to make collaborative efforts – working with a diverse set of stakeholders – as shale development matures aimed at creating even more opportunities and partnerships with local businesses,” he wrote in an email.
 
Philadelphia Inquirer: CNG pump: Small start to what may be a huge new business
The Corbett administration has embraced CNG to promote the state's natural gas industry, which has grown dramatically since the Marcellus Shale discovery. Marcellus producers now account for 23 percent of all U.S. gas production. The annual use of natural gas as vehicle fuel has quadrupled over the last 17 years to 32 billion cubic feet, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
 
Tribune-Review: New BC3 classes prepare students for energy industry jobs
Butler County Community College is adding four energy classes to its curriculum this fall, part of a strategy to prepare students for employment in the booming natural gas industry. The classes will lead to a certificate and eventually to a degree program, school officials say. “This is the largest opportunity to hit Western Pennsylvania in over 100 years,” Bill Lucas, a consultant to the school for its energy program and a retired president of Equitable Gas Co., said of the region's natural gas drilling boom.
 
Tribune-Review: Drilling laws: Your rights
A Texas energy company's withdrawal of a forced-pooling application spares a few landowners in Lawrence and Mercer counties unjust, unwanted natural-gas drilling. But the 1961 state law on forced pooling that the company cited remains an unconstitutional violation of private property rights.
 
Roanoke Times: Virginia Democrats walk line between environmental, business interests
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, opposes off-shore drilling — unlike Warner and McAuliffe — and says he has “significant concerns” about hydraulic fracturing, the controversial process of extracting natural gas from the ground. Yet Northam believes the pipeline is a good move for the state.
 
Akron Beacon Journal: Natural gas storage deficit to 5-year average is narrowing
Storage injections have continued to outpace the five-year (2009-13) average this summer, with inventories as of September 5 at 2,801 billion cubic feet, according to data from the Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report (WNGSR). The winter of 2013-14 led to a large drawdown in inventories, with stocks ending March 2014 almost 1 trillion cubic feet lower than the five-year average and at their lowest end-March level since 2003.
 
Columbus Dispatch: Kasich vows to ‘focus’ on hiking drilling tax
The legislature has steadfastly declined to give Gov. John Kasich what he wants regarding a new severance tax on hydraulic fracturing in Ohio, but the governor says he’s only going to push harder if he wins re-election — and end a “rip-off” of consumers at the same time.
 
Dallas Business Journal: Study pins shale water contamination on well construction, not HF
A study published Monday says that the shale-gas boom has contaminated drinking water wells in the Barnett Shale of North Texas and in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by researchers from five universities, the Dallas Morning News reported.
 
Houston Chronicle: Shale development and trucking accidents on Texas roads
The records don't show how many of those deaths might be directly linked to the oil and gas industry. But deaths in commercial trucking accidents and multiple-fatality crashes have gone up on roads near drill sites and major highways like Interstate 20.