Archive for the 'Natural Gas' Category
Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 02 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Energy
WTAJ (Altoona, PA):
The slowing national economy will pay off for consumers in this one way. Natural Gas heating bills may be lower than expected. A number of natural gas suppliers are cutting their rates….
These gas prices are falling because the cost of natural gas generally follows the price of oil on the international markets. And as the price of petroleum has fallen, the price of natural gas is also going down. While gas rates are now lower than they have been for the last couple of months, rates are still higher than they were last year at this time. But the increase is not as drastic has had been predicted before the recent drop in international markets.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 25 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Energy
The New York Times:
American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.
The new drilling boom uses advanced technology to release gas trapped in huge shale beds found throughout North America — gas long believed to be out of reach. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, releasing less of the emissions that cause global warming than coal or oil.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 11 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Energy
Seeking Alpha:
A study released on 7/30/08 by Amercan Clean Skies Foundation and Navigant Consulting states that U.S. unconventional natural gas deposits are sufficient to supply 118 years of U.S. demand at 2007 levels. Newly developed fracking and horizontal drilling techniques have made it possible to recover enormous quantities of gas from tight sands, coalbed methane, and gas shale formations, reports the Oil & Gas Journal (8/4/08)…
Natural gas is finding more demand from electric utilities. It is fairly cheap and easy to create and operate a natural gas facility for generating power, not to mention the environmental advantages over coal. Considering all these factors, a new super-abundance of gas may hinder efforts to promote solar, wind, and other renewable forms of electrical generation that may need subsidies to make them competitive with gas.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 29 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Energy
The New York Times:
A no-holds-barred, all-American gold rush for natural gas is under way in this forgotten corner of the South, and De Soto Parish, with its fat check from a large energy company this month, is only the latest and largest beneficiary. The county leaders and everyone around them, for mile after mile, over to Texas and up to Arkansas, in the down-at-the-heels city of Shreveport and in its struggling neighbors, suddenly find themselves sitting on what could prove to be the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States.
Already, several dozen people who own parcels of land over the field are becoming instant millionaires as energy companies pay big money for the mineral rights to the gas, which like other energy sources is worth far more than it was last year. Jalopies are being traded in for Cadillacs, plans for swimming pools are being hatched in rusty trailers, and the old courthouse here is packed to the rafters day after day with oil company “landmen” (and women), whose job it is to frantically search the record books for the owners of the mineral rights to land that has become like gold.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 24 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Water, Environment, Wastewater
Times Union (NY):
The gas in the Marcellus is held like bubbles in a brick of Swiss cheese. To extract it, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is shot into the earth with such force it fractures the rock, releasing the bubbles to the surface. When the gas surfaces, so does the water - laden with natural toxins from the shale, including suspected cancer-causing compounds.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 03 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Energy, M&A
MarketWatch:
Dominion said Wednesday it’ll sell two gas utilities for $910 million. The Richmond, Va. electric and natural gas utility firm said Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Fund North America, a San Francisco-based infrastructure fund, will buy Dominion Peoples and Dominion Hope natural gas distribution companies. The deal is expected to close in 2009. Dominion plans to use all after-tax proceeds, expected to be approximately $675 million to reduce debt.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 24 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: General, Natural Gas, Electric, Energy
Investor’s Business Daily via Yahoo!:
Natural gas futures have vaulted 154% since its Aug. 27 low to $13.203 per million British thermal units on Monday.
The run-up has outpaced the rise in crude oil, which has doubled.
Consumers may not feel the full impact immediately, but continued high prices will push up monthly utility bills, if they haven’t already done so. Americans often use natural gas for heating stove tops and water, but they see a bigger hit when they fire up gas furnaces in the cold winter months. Also, rising prices show up in electricity costs, with natural gas providing the fuel for more power plants across the country.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 07 May 2008 | Tagged as: Natural Gas, Electric, Energy, Nuclear
WSJ via MarketWatch:
Power prices are being pushed up across the U.S., with increases sometimes soaring into double digits, due to costlier coal and natural gas, the fuels used to make 70% of the nation’s electricity.
It usually takes awhile for fuel-price swings to show up in electricity bills because utilities typically buy most of what they need under long-term arrangements. As older contracts expire, though, utilities are facing the reality of higher costs.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 25 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: General, Natural Gas, Electric, Energy
The New York Times:
After struggling with soaring heating costs through the winter, millions of Americans are behind on electric and gas bills, and a record number of families could face energy shut-offs over the next two months, according to state energy officials and utilities around the country.
The escalating costs of heating oil, propane and kerosene, most commonly used in the Northeast, have posed the greatest burdens, officials say, but natural gas and electricity prices have also climbed at a time when low-end incomes are stagnant and prices have also jumped for food and gasoline.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza on 06 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: General, Natural Gas, Energy
Wall Street Journal (subscription):
As utilities abandon plans to build coal-fired power plants, a big bet Sempra Energy has made on natural gas is turning out to be timely.
Sempra has been pouring money into natural-gas infrastructure. The big San Diego energy company is spending $2 billion on construction of the first liquefied-natural-gas receipt terminal on the West Coast and another in Louisiana. It has budgeted $1.2 billion for a 25% stake in a new gas pipeline — the Rockies Express — stretching from Colorado to Ohio, and $200 million for more gas storage in Louisiana.
“Sempra’s been investing in all the right areas,” says Faisal Khan, utilities analyst for Citigroup in New York.
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