Consent

Natural gas and oil production is vulnerable to decreasing water availability and operations in Arctic Alaska to thawing permafrost, both of which are potential impacts of climate change, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The total volume of Canadian reserves earmarked for liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales to Asia from the northern Pacific coast of British Columbia (BC) has hit an astronomical 137 Tcf, according to the National Energy Board (NEB).

Those who worry that export of liquefied domestic natural gas will invite global oil price volatility into the U.S. gas market are forgetting about fungibility, Rice University energy fellow Ken Medlock said during a recent presentation.

Liberty Natural Gas LLC, which last year withdrew applications to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal off the coast of New Jersey, has filed a revamped application with the Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the U.S. Coast Guard. The new application is for a different location and would allow many more LNG carrier deliveries once the facility is completed.

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.

In its latest Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the Energy Information Administration (EIA) nudged down is Henry Hub natural gas price forecast for this year and next and predicted that coal-fired power plants will retain their recent gains over gas-fueled facilities.

Senate Republicans appear to have tempered their opposition to the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a vote appears imminent.

Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) was to start up service over the weekend on the first pipeline loop of its major Northeast Supply Link expansion, one of the key links in sending new gas out of the Marcellus Shale.

A bipartisan coalition of 34 senators has called on the Department of Energy (DOE) to speed up its processing of permit requests to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to foreign countries with which the United States does not have have a free trade agreement (non-FTA). At the current rate, the senators estimated that it could take the department up to two years to approve all of the non-FTA permits pending at DOE.