9-22-14

Dear Xxxx,

Roll Call came out with their “10 Most Vulnerable Senators” list — and I’m #3.  (NGP Photo, U.S. Senator Mark Begich.)

I don’t know if I’d use the word “vulnerable.” I’d prefer “Most Spent Against’ or “Most Neck-and-Neck” or “Biggest Dead Heat.” But in the political world, that all boils down to the same thing.

We’re in a tight race in Alaska.

Grassroots supporters like you are going to make or break our campaign. If you can, please give $5 to help us reach our $220,000 goal before this month’s FEC deadline.

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

Express Donate: $5

Express Donate: $10

Express Donate: $25

Or donate another amount.

Lots of recent polls show me and my opponent in the margin of error. Add that to over $12 million in Outside spending from groups backed by Karl Rove, the Kochs, and others, and we need a big response from you.

I’m counting on you to defend against attacks from the Kochs and Rove.

Let’s show our grassroots strength this month by blowing past our $220,000 goal before the FEC deadline — chip in $5 right now to help us out.

Thank you.

Mark

Today's Energy In Depth Energy Links:

• Listen: EID’s Katie Brown talks HF, economic opportunities from shale on radio program in Pa. (link)

NATIONAL

Study says casing, not HF, at fault. Denton Record Chronicle. Steve Everley of Energy in Depth said that the study’s authors placed blame on well-integrity problems for the water quality issues, “but they never identified a single gas well that’s actually leaking.” Everley said the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, completed a study on groundwater contamination in Parker County, one of the areas researchers sampled, which determined the gas wells were “constructed in full accordance with the law.”
 
Will America take advantage of its opportunity? Washington Examiner, Op-Ed. Not long ago, conventional wisdom was that America’s natural gas production would decline over time. Terminals were planned and built in anticipation of the need to import natural gas from overseas. Now, these facilities are either being converted to export terminals or are idle.
 
US shale boom writes a tale of two emerging classes of gas carriers. Platts. Growing natural gas liquids production spurred by the US shale gas boom has stoked interest in new classes of ships to move ethane and LPG across oceans: very large ethane carriers and ultra large gas carriers.
 
Pressure builds to allow US exports of crude. Boston Globe. Senator Edward J. Markey is fighting an increasingly lonely, and perhaps futile, battle to prevent the overseas export of crude oil gushing from shale fields in North Dakota, Texas, and other parts of the country.
 
The Science Is Settled: HF Is Safe. American Thinker, Op-Ed. The science is settled, as the climate change supporters like to say.  Only this time, science confirms the safety of hydraulic fracturing.  According to a new study published by the National Academy of Sciences, fracking is safe.  End of discussion.
 
Energy boom can fuel big boost in world security. Boston Herald, Op-Ed. The ongoing oil and gas boom in the United States since 2008 has led some to herald the dawn of American “energy independence.” According to a November 2012 report of the International Energy Agency, the United States is set to overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s leading oil producer, having already surpassed Russia as the largest producer of natural gas. The IEA report suggests the United States will be a net exporter of energy by 2017.
 
Siemens cuts multibillion dollar deal for Dresser-Rand. Houston Chronicle/Fuel Fix. The acquisition, announced by both companies late Sunday, marks a major move for the Munich-based engineering conglomerate, a rival of GE and other global industrial manufacturers, into Houston and in the U.S. oil and gas sector as steam turbines, engines, gas turbines and compressors have found a major market in oil and gas, power generation and other industrial uses in the United States as newly tapped shale plays yield a surge in domestic natural gas output. The deal is expected to close next year.
 
What Drives Anti-HF Zealots? Town Hall, Column. The shale oil production boom could boost US crude production to 9.5 million barrels of oil per day (bopd) next year, reducing America’s crude oil imports to 21% of domestic demand, the lowest level since 1968. Output from fracked wells represents 43% of all US oil production and 67% of natural gas production; its oil could reach 10 million bopd by 2016, the Energy Information Administration says.
 
Dangers Aside, Railways Reshape Crude Market. Wall Street Journal. Today, 1.6 million barrels of oil a day are riding the rails, close to 20% of the total pumped in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration, chugging across plains and over bridges, rumbling through cities and towns on their way to refineries on the coasts and along the Gulf of Mexico.
 
INTERNATIONAL

US shale exports to hit Gazprom revenue. Financial Times. Russia’s Gazprom could lose 18 per cent of its revenues as a result of competition from US liquefied natural gas exports, according to a New York-based think-tank.
 
Nova Scotia Should Not Ban HF. Huffington Post, Op-Ed.  Nova Scotia's government recently announced it would table legislation to establish a moratorium on the practice of hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") for the production of natural gas in the province. The ban, which follows a lengthy report on the safety of hydraulic fracturing, is indefinite, but not permanent. (One is reminded of the saying that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax.).
 
Algeria's plans for shale has risks. International Policy Digest. Algeria’s state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, announced this summer that it plans to exploit the country’s shale gas reserves by 2020, taking advantage of what BP estimates to be the world’s third-largest reserves of shale gas. The plans currently estimate that the first stage of the extraction will produce enough gas to equal 40% of the country’s present production, a significant increase in supply if the estimates hold true.

COLORADO

How Coloradans are shaping their energy future. Denver Post,Op-Ed. While fracking has successfully been utilized by Colorado energy producers for decades, recent innovations such as horizontal drilling have unlocked vast shale resources once thought to be impossible or uneconomical to develop. And this process is overseen by dedicated professionals in environmental protection and environmental and public health.
 
John Hickenlooper could lose his job in November. Here’s why. Washington Post, Column. Republicans have even tried to turn a major Hickenlooper victory into a weakness. Last month, the governor brokered an agreement between environmental groups and the state energy industry to remove four controversial ballot measures related to oil exploration and fracking from November’s ballot.

NORTH CAROLINA

Public meeting on proposed gas pipeline to N.C.. Fayetteville Observer. A public informational meeting on a proposed $4.5 billion to $5 billion interstate natural gas transmission pipeline that would run through Cumberland and Robeson counties is scheduled in Fayetteville on Tuesday. Dominion Resources Inc., the Richmond, Virginia, company that has announced plans to build the 550-mile pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina, is holding the meeting at the Holiday Inn on Interstate 95, according to a news release from Clean Water for North Carolina.

NORTHEAST

Symposiums to spotlight Pittsburgh's role as energy powerhouse. Tribune-Review. Pittsburgh's clout in coal mining and natural gas will intersect this week as it hosts two major energy conferences. “Pittsburgh is flexing its muscle as the energy capital of the East,” said David Spigelmyer, president of the North Fayette-based Marcellus Shale Coalition.
 
Trial and error approach in the Marcellus. Pittsburg Post-Gazette. Patrick Creighton, spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an advocacy group that represents nearly every major driller in the state, said in an email statement: “When incidents occur — as they do in any industrial process, and as rare as they may be — corrective action is taken to mitigate future events. Our member companies are doing just that.”
 
Gas industry remedies 'brain drain' in Western Pennsylvania. Tribune-Review. The Crawford County native is an example of what experts believe is the natural gas industry's gradual reversal of the region's decades-old “brain drain,” the mass exodus of young, educated workers to other states because there were no local jobs for them. It's a reversal that includes workers in fields other than those typically in demand by drilling companies, experts said, pointing to new positions in public relations, law, accounting and other specialized areas such as Welker's.
 
Cuomo foes pounce on shale indecision. Journal News. Despite taking steps early in his term toward lifting the state's de facto ban on large-scale hydraulic fracturing, Cuomo's administration abruptly added another layer of review in late 2012. Now, the moratorium Cuomo inherited in 2011 remains in place and a decision on fracking's future will wait until after Election Day.
 
Negative publicity does more damage to companies than fines. Pittsburg Post-Gazette. “The fine is nowhere near as damaging as the press coverage and the public attention” after an incident or fine is publicized, said Lou D’Amico, president and executive director of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association. Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for Range Resources, the state’s second-largest Marcellus driller, agreed. “The attention, public scrutiny; it’s reputational. You don’t want that to happen,” he said.
 
Public meets with long delays in reviewing DEP files. Observer-Reporter. DEP spokesman John Poister said the DEP has neither the staff nor the space for many people to conduct file reviews at its Southwest Regional Office in Pittsburgh. He said the DEP has been overwhelmed with public requests to review natural gas drilling records, resulting in a seven-week backlog for people seeking appointments for access to them.
 
HF debate full of hot air. Union-Sun & Journal, Column. Hydraulic fracturing ranks among the most contentious issues in New York. For each person clamoring for the jobs and economic development it will bring to the state, there’s another who strongly opposes the method of natural gas extraction for its potential to damage the environment.

OHIO

HF is safe if properly done. Columbus Dispatch, Editorial. A study led by an Ohio State University scientist and published in a national journal last Monday has good news for Ohio’s economy: If done correctly, the method of drilling for oil and gas known as horizontal fracking, which is fueling a jobs-and-energy boom, doesn’t pose a danger to drinking-water supplies.
 
Columbiana facility waits for ODNR approval. Morning Journal. A company using a site near a residential area to wash its trucks that haul fracking fluid remains closed until it receives the proper permit through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).
 
Why not use recycled water for shale? Canton Repository. Recycling wastewater and reusing it for fracking makes sense, but the cost will need to become competitive with injection-well disposal, Dick said. Drillers are using a percentage of recycled water to frack some wells, according to FracFocus and ODNR records.
 
Thirsty wells: HF consumes billions of gallons. Canton Repository. Water is key to fracking. Pumped under high pressure, along with sand and chemicals, it breaks apart underground rock formations to release the oil and natural gas trapped inside. Of the millions of gallons of liquid used to frack a well, water accounts for more than 99 percent, said Jeffrey C. Dick, director of Youngstown State University’s Natural Gas and Water Resources Institute.
 
Water consumption not disclosed for all wells. New Philadelphia Times Reporter. Ohio’s shale drillers have to report the volume of water, sand and chemicals they use to frack each well. Right now, those reports go directly to the state’s Department of Natural Resources in paper form or electronically to FracFocus, an online registry, said ODNR spokesman Matt Eiselstein.

TEXAS

Railroad commissioners say study confirms that HF is safe. Fort Worth Star Telegram. “When you get away from the sensational headline,