1950S

Kitimat, just in from the coast in northwestern British Columbia (BC), which has its roots as a company town planned and built in the 1950s by the Aluminum Co. of Canada, is quickly becoming the company town for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Royal Dutch Shell plc on Thursday confirmed that it has purchased an marine import terminal there and now is exploring — with its Asian partners — its potential as an LNG export facility.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Tuesday said the department is weighing how it will move forward with a policy requiring producers to disclose the fluids associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public lands. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees 250 million acres, which contains 11% of the nation’s natural gas supply.

Coalbed methane used to be a deadly threat to coal miners. In the 1950s and 1960s natural gas was routinely flared as an unwanted by-product of oil production. Gas from shales and tight sands, once spurned as too difficult to produce, is now the future for many domestic producers. And methane hydrates lie beneath the world’s oceans waiting for technology to free them while liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers ply the waves above.

Coalbed methane used to be a deadly threat to coal miners. In the 1950s and 1960s natural gas was routinely flared as an unwanted by-product of oil production. Gas from shales and tight sands, once spurned as too difficult to produce, is now the future for many domestic producers. And natural gas hydrates lie beneath the world’s oceans waiting for technology to free them while liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers ply the waves above.

El Paso Corp. has settled five lawsuits arising from the fatal explosion on El Paso Natural Gas’ South Mainline system in New Mexico in August 2000, which killed 12 members of two extended families. Terms of the settlements were not disclosed.