Traditional

Climate change impacts are lessened when power plants burn natural gas instead of coal, but the same is not necessarily true when vehicles burn natural gas instead of traditional fuels because methane leakage more than offsets the clean-burning benefits of gas, according to a methane leakage model developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and university researchers. However, the gas industry countered that the model relies on “outdated and incomplete” data.

Climate change impacts are lessened when power plants burn natural gas instead of coal, but the same is not necessarily true when vehicles burn natural gas instead of traditional fuels because methane leakage more than offsets the clean-burning benefits of gas, according to a methane leakage model developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and university researchers. However, the gas industry countered that the model relies on “outdated and incomplete” data.

Climate change impacts are lessened when power plants burn natural gas instead of coal, but the same is not necessarily true when vehicles burn natural gas instead of traditional fuels because methane leakage more than offsets the clean-burning benefits of gas, according to a methane leakage model developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and university researchers. However, the gas industry countered that the model relies on “outdated and incomplete” data.

Even though northern shale drilling remains in its infancy, the British Columbia cradle of the emerging natural gas source is catching up fast to the traditional mainstay of Canadian supplies.

With most new oil/gas exploration and production (E&P) moving to the more populated eastern slope of the Colorado Rockies from its traditional rural west-central focus, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) embarked last month on a three-month public service advertising campaign as part of a broader community outreach on the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). So far the campaign is raising more interest than anticipated, according to COGA, and mostly because anti-fracking groups are crying foul.

Inergy subsidiary Central New York Oil & Gas Co. LLC (CYNOG) is ready to move forward with construction of the MARC I Hub Line project in northeastern Pennsylvania — a project that is expected to give northern markets greater access to Marcellus Shale gas — following a FERC order this week granting the project a certificate of public convenience and necessity.

Shale gas production is projected to increase to the point where it becomes the dominant domestic gas supply over the next two decades, but it brings with it the “greatest source of uncertainty” facing North American gas markets, according to the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions.

Government officials, environmentalists and industry representatives carried the debate on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to California’s south-central coast last Thursday in Santa Barbara County, and while there was no across-the-board agreement, local elected officials did voice surprise that fracking is a potential issue in their county where offshore oil/gas development has had a long-standing love-hate relationship with residents.

Noting that traditional natural gas and coal-fired electric generation plants have to work extra and inefficiently, Colorado-based Bentek Energy’s study, “The Wind Power Paradox,” concludes that the integration of wind-generated supplies on a number of major grid systems in the United States has resulted in “little or no emissions reductions” on a systemwide basis.