News

May 15, 2012

"It's hard to remember that 10 years ago the price of oil was $20 (a barrel)," said Edward Chow, a senior fellow in the energy and national security program at a Washington, D.C., think tank. "It's hard to know where all this is heading."

Unprecedented price volatility and market changes coming faster than ever are making it tougher to accurately forecast oil prices and market demand, Chow told an audience of almost 100 people at an Alaska World Affairs Council luncheon May 12...

May 4, 2012

The North American gas-price collapse caused by the shale-gas boom is simultaneously battering producers while exciting global buyers that some lower-cost liquefied natural gas might soon be available to them.

Those were take-away messages from the World LNG Americas Summit held April 25-26 in San Antonio.

Delegates from across the United States and around the world tried to make sense of what is occurring in the North American natural gas industry.

They were foreign...

May 2, 2012

Alaska on Wednesday formally endorsed an effort by TransCanada and three North Slope producers to shift their focus to a pipeline project that could export liquefied natural gas to Asian markets.

The state commissioners of revenue and natural resources agreed to amend TransCanada’s gas pipeline project plan adopted in 2008 under the Alaska...

March 30, 2012

The three major North Slope producers and a major pipeline company are getting together to look at a proposed multibillion-dollar project that could result in exporting Alaska natural gas to Asia markets, they said in a letter Friday to Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell.

"As a result of the rapidly evolving global market, large-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG)...

March 26, 2012

China has tremendous shale gas resources, Russia wants to move aggressively into the LNG export business, and the potential for North American LNG projects to sign up customers in Asia "may not be open indefinitely," said Ian Nathan, manager for global gas and LNG research at Energy Intelligence.

In the world of Asian gas supply and demand, "a lot could change very quickly," Nathan told the audience at the 12th annual Arctic Oil & Gas Symposium in Calgary March 13....

March 21, 2012

Natural gas is commonly priced in terms of million British thermal units, or Btu. But what is a Btu?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published a readable, short primer on Btu, a common measure of the energy content of various sources of energy.

"One Btu is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit," the EIA explains. How much is that? About the energy emitted from a single wooden kitchen match when lit...

February 27, 2012

The U.S. shale gas production boom isn't the only big news in global natural gas markets. Major changes predicted to shape gas markets in the coming decades  include the growing number of LNG export projects under construction and proposed (including North America LNG export projects), rising demand in Asia, and a wider and deeper Panama Canal that will boost tanker traffic between Atlantic and Pacific markets.

These all lead to the big question among panelists and attendees at...

February 27, 2012

Of all the unknowns facing global natural gas markets in the years ahead, none loom larger than China.

The nation of more than 1.3 billion people could buy a lot more liquefied natural gas, or not. It could buy a lot more pipeline gas from Turkmenistan and maybe even Russia, or not. It could produce from its own massive shale gas reserves, or not. Its electrical generating plants could break out of the Coal Age, or not.

There's not much doubt that China will play a huge role in...

February 9, 2012

Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and consultant on global oil and gas history and politics, told several hundred utility regulators Feb. 7 that if just five years ago any of them had talked about exporting U.S. natural gas, "we'd take you off to the asylum."

But in the past five years, he said, "the impact of shale gas has been enormous," filling the U.S. market with new supplies, changing the economics for the nation's electrical generation industry, and...

February 9, 2012

State regulators who watch over natural gas and electric utility rates and service packed a hotel ballroom to overflow in Washington, D.C., Feb. 6 to learn more about shale gas production, hydraulic fracturing, environmental regulations, gas prices - and the future.

Where will all the natural gas come from if fracking is restricted and shale production cannot meet the growing demand for gas to fuel electrical generation, asked Barry Smitherman of the Texas Railroad Commission...