2012

The city council in Youngstown, OH, voted 5-2 Wednesday in favor of an ordinance that could open city-owned land to oil and natural gas drilling.

Effective Oct. 15 (Monday), producers have to notify the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by e-mail two days in advance of their plans to hydraulically fracture (frack) natural gas wells. An e-mail address system has been set up to allow operators to notify the the agency, said Khary Cauthen, senior director of federal relations with the American Petroleum Institute. Producers would send e-mails to EPA offices in the regions where they are operating. The EPA recently “made known” to producers a list of the e-mail addresses, according to API. “Having to notify the EPA two days before a specific operation we felt…makes sense. In other iterations of this rule, it was a longer time period of notification that did not make sense because sometimes locations or weather or what may have you will change exactly what the operation is. Two days before is appropriate,” Cauthen said. The notification requirement was part of the new source performance standards for fracked wells, which the EPA finalized in August (see NGI, Aug. 27). Both the API and the Independent Petroleum Association of America protested the EPA final standards, which are aimed at restricting volatile organic compounds and sulfur dioxide emissions from onshore natural gas operations, including fracked wells.

While most now expect liquefaction and export of natural gas from North America to happen, how much will be sent abroad and what it will mean for global markets and gas-oil price indexation are unclear.

Reflecting the “formidable power” of drilling technology that transformed the natural gas industry, surging unconventional oil production in North America is redefining the industry and should transform international trade over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Friday.

Reflecting the “formidable power” of drilling technology that transformed the natural gas industry, surging unconventional oil production in North America is redefining the industry and should transform international trade over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Friday.

Households heating with natural gas will spend an average of 15% more this winter than last year due to the anticipated colder heating season, slightly higher residential gas prices and an increase in demand, according to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook that was released last Wednesday.

Replacing coal-fired power plants in Texas with natural gas combined cycle plants would reduce freshwater consumption in the state by an estimated 53 billion gallons annually — 60% of coal power’s current water footprint — according to a report by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT).

Households heating with natural gas will spend an average of 15% more this winter than last year due to the anticipated colder heating season, slightly higher residential gas prices and an increase in demand, according to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook that was released Wednesday.

Eventual liquefaction and export of shale gas from the United States will be too little to bend global gas markets away from oil price indexation, and a shale gas revolution abroad is too far off to decouple natural gas and oil prices in other parts of the world, Bernstein Research Senior Analyst Neil Beveridge said in a note.