Product

Pinto Energy LLC is developing a small-scale gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility in Ashtabula, OH, to take advantage of low-cost natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales. Pinto Chairman Guy Dove toldNGI’s Shale Dailythe facility could be the first of its kind in the country and advancements in GTL technology are making it possible.

A Tulsa, OK-based synfuel technology company has entered a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an unnamed shale gas exploration and production (E&P) company to study the feasibility of a plant for turning natural gas into diesel.

Oil and gas patch output is typically measured in barrels or cubic feet, but gross domestic product (GDP) is another yardstick by which to chart growth, and that’s particularly true in North Dakota, home to the Bakken Shale, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Friday.

Crosstex Energy LP has completed two projects aimed at getting shale oil and condensate to higher paying markets.

Although investors were disappointed by the Utica Shale production figures released last week by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), a surge in production should be at hand in the play as infrastructure comes online, according to an analysis from RBN Energy LLC.

The stock market price of natural gas-weighted companies spiked from late Friday through Tuesday as prospects for a more profitable product heightened when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) broke the log-jam and announced it was conferring a worldwide liquefied natural gas (LNG) export license on a second project (see Daily GPI, May 20).

Construction is under way on Intercontinental Terminals Co. LLC’s (ITC) new bulk liquids terminal on the Houston Ship Channel, which will provide storage and handling for petrochemicals and petroleum products as well as petrochemical gases and natural gas liquids (NGL). ITC, a unit of Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) Inc., has been operating on the channel since 1972 and owns and operates a 12.8 million bbl liquid bulk terminal facility in Deer Park, TX. The greenfield terminal is in Pasadena, TX, on the south side of the channel. Start up of operations is expected during the second quarter of 2015 with 10 tanks of 100,000 bbl each. The terminal will have two deep-water ship docks and four barge docks capable of handling large oceangoing tankers as well as inland barges. Multiple product pipelines are adjacent to or near the new terminal, which will also have rail and truck facilities.

The country is in the midst of an “unconventional revolution in oil and gas” whose implications reach well beyond the energy industry, IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, tells the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Power in pre-filed testimony to be given Tuesday.

Gasfrac Energy Services Inc., which has been attempting to muscle into the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) market with its waterless technology, hit some roadblocks in 2Q2012, in part because the pressure pumping market is bursting at the seams, company officials said Thursday.