Becoming

The capital markets for U.S. exploration and production (E&P) companies “appear wide open,” with most of the available funds likely to target onshore oil instead of natural gas through 2014, Barclays Capital analysts said on Wednesday.

Natural gas generation sets (gensets) are becoming more popular for distributed power generation installations and could surpass 13 GW of capacity worldwide by 2018, according to Navigant Research.

While natural gas is becoming the fuel of choice due to its clean-burning qualities and newfound abundance in North America thanks to shale development, the increased gas demand from multiple sources, including the industrial sector, electric power sector, transportation and liquefied natural gas and pipeline exports, is unlikely to boost the domestic price of the resource substantially, according to a new study titled “New Dynamics of the U.S. Natural Gas Market,” conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

The appetite for natural gas has extended into areas without extensive pipeline networks through trucking the fuel in the form of compressed natural gas (CNG). It is becoming a growing business, particularly for large industrial businesses.

While natural gas is becoming the fuel of choice due to its clean-burning qualities and newfound abundance in North America thanks to shale development, the increased gas demand from multiple sources, including the industrial sector, electric power sector, transportation and liquefied natural gas and pipeline exports, is unlikely to boost the domestic price of the resource substantially, according to a new study titled “New Dynamics of the U.S. Natural Gas Market,” conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

While natural gas is becoming the fuel of choice due to its clean-burning qualities and newfound abundance in North America thanks to shale development, the increased gas demand from multiple sources, including the industrial sector, electric power sector, transportation and liquefied natural gas and pipeline exports, is unlikely to boost the domestic price of the resource substantially, according to a new study titled “New Dynamics of the U.S. Natural Gas Market,” conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

The costly and complex decision to shift from being one of the biggest natural gas producers to becoming one of the largest liquids operators showed some positives for Chesapeake Energy Corp. in the first three months of this year, which also gained on improving natural gas prices.

Hess Corp. last week marked the culmination of its multi-year strategic makeover into becoming a pure-play exploration and production (E&P) company by announcing it would be “fully exiting” the downstream and selling its retail, energy marketing and energy trading businesses. It also plans to install six new independent directors. However, the actions are not enough, a dissident shareholder said.

Hess Corp. on Monday marked the culmination of its multi-year strategic makeover into becoming a pure-play exploration and production (E&P) company. The company is “fully exiting” the downstream and selling its retail, energy marketing and energy trading businesses. It also plans to install six new independent directors.