US oil prices ended the past week's trading nearly 6% lower at $80.51 a barrel, after hitting a nine week low midweek, falling below pre-war levels as fears of a wide spread conflict in the Middle East that would disrupt global supplies receded....other factors contributing to lower oil prices this week were a stronger US dollar, which makes commodities priced in dollars cheaper because it raises prices for those using other currencies, another increase in US commercial crude supplies amid record-high domestic oil production and falling demand for fuel, a Fed policy meeting wherein future rate hikes were kept on the table and one of the weakest monthly employment reports of the post pandemic era....
meanwhile, natural gas prices finished less than 1% higher at $3.515 per mmBTU on a surge in early-season heating demand brought on by frigid temperatures that reached deep into the South, with prices rallying into the plus column on Friday on record LNG exports...Reuters and others reported that this week's natural gas price rise was 11%, but most of that was due to the switch to quoting the higher priced December contract, which closed last week at $3.483 per mmBTU, after trading in the November contract had expired priced at $3.164 per mmBTU...to say natural gas prices rose 11% when referencing different contracts is like saying automobile prices rose 11% after one sees a higher priced car on the dealer's lot this week than last; no one could have bought any natural gas contract at last week's price and sold it at an 11% profit this week...
The EIA's natural gas storage report for the week ending October 27th indicated that the amount of working natural gas held in underground storage in the US increased by 79 billion cubic feet to 3,779 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which left our natural gas supplies 293 billion cubic feet, or 8.4% above the 3,486 billion cubic feet that were in storage on October 27th of last year, and 205 billion cubic feet, or 5.7% more than the five-year average of 3,574 billion cubic feet of natural gas that were in working storage as of the 27th of October over the most recent five years…the 79 billion cubic foot injection into US natural gas working storage for the cited week was in line with the average 80 billion cubic feet addition to supplies that was expected by industry analysts surveyed by Reuters, but was quite a bit more than the average 57 billion cubic feet addition to natural gas storage that has been typical for the same Autumn week over the past 5 years, but much less than the 99 billion cubic feet that were added to natural gas storage during the corresponding week of 2022…
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending October 27th indicated that after an increase in our oil imports offset a drop in the amount of oil supplies that the EIA could not account for, we again had surplus oil to add to our stored commercial crude supplies. for the fifth time in sixteen weeks, and for the 23rd time in the past 45 weeks ...Our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 412,000 barrels per day to average 6,425,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 71,000 barrels per day the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by 64,000 barrels per day to average 4,897,000 barrels per day, which combined meant that the net of our trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 1,528,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending October 27th, 348,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week. Over the same period, production of crude from US wells remained at its all time high of 13,200,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have averaged a total of 14,728,000 barrels per day during the October 27th reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 15,251,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 27th, an average of 62,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil that our refineries were processing during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that an average of 111,000 barrels of oil per day were being added to the supplies of oil stored in the US. So, based on that reported & estimated data, the crude oil figures provided by the EIA for the week ending October 27th appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 634,000 barrels per day less than what was added to storage plus our oil refineries reported they used during the week. To account for that difference between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA just inserted a [ +634,000 ] barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet in order to make the reported data for the supply of oil and for the consumption of it balance out, a fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”, thus suggesting there was an error in the week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed.....however, since most oil traders react to these weekly EIA reports as if they were accurate, and since these weekly figures therefore often drive oil pricing, and hence decisions to drill or complete oil wells, we’ll continue to report this data just as it's published, and just as it's watched & believed to be reasonably reliable by most everyone in the industry...(for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that “unaccounted for” oil, see this EIA explainer)….(NB: there is also an aging twitter thread from an EIA administrator addressing these errors, and what they had hoped to do about it)
This week's 111,000 barrel per day increase in our overall crude oil inventories was all added to our commercially available stocks of crude oil, while the amount of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve remained unchanged. Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports rose to 6,177,000 barrels per day last week, which was 1.4% more than the 6,089,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year. This week’s crude oil production was reported to be unchanged at an all time high of 13,200,000 barrels per day because the EIA's rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was unchanged at 12,800,000 barrels per day, while Alaska’s oil production was 3,000 barrels per day higher at 433,000 barrels per day but still added the same 400,000 barrels per day to the EIA's rounded national total as it did last week...US crude oil production had reached a pre-pandemic high of 13,100,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th 2020, so this week’s reported oil production figure is now 0.8% above that of our pre-pandemic production peak, and 36.1% above the pandemic low of 9,700,000 barrels per day that US oil production had fallen to during the third week of February of 2021.
US oil refineries were operating at a nine month low of 85.4% of their capacity while processing those 15,251,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 27th, down from their 85.6% utilization rate of last week, a decrease in the refinery utilization rate that is not uncommon during the Fall, when refineries are undergoing seasonal maintenance as they changeover to produce winter blends of fuel.. however, the 15,251,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 3.7% less than the 15,842,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during week ending October 28th of 2022, and 4.8% less than the 16,015,000 barrels that were being refined during the prepandemic week ending October 25th, 2019, when our refinery utilization rate was at 87.7%..
Even with the increase in the amount of oil being refined this week, the gasoline output from our refineries was much lower, decreasing by 330,000 barrels per day to 9,494,000 barrels per day during the week ending October 27th, after our refineries' gasoline output had increased by 63,000 barrels per day during the prior week. This week’s gasoline production was still 0.1% more than the 9,480,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, but 6.8% less than the gasoline production of 10,184,000 barrels per day during the prepandemic week ending October 25th, 2019. At the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) decreased by 153,000 barrels per day to 4,580,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 39,000 barrels per day during the prior week. With that decrease, our distillates output was 10.5% less than the 5,117,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending October 28th of 2022, and 7.8% less than the 4,970,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending October 25th, 2019..
Even with this week's big decrease in our gasoline production, our supplies of gasoline in storage at the end of the week rose for the 12th time in thirty-six weeks, increasing by 65,000 barrels to 223,522,000 barrels during the week ending October 27th, after our gasoline inventories had increased by 156,000 barrels during the prior week. Our gasoline supplies inched up again this week because the amount of gasoline supplied to US users fell by 167,000 barrels per day to 8,697,000 barrels per day, while our exports of gasoline rose by 2,000 barrels per day to 835,000 barrels per day, and while our imports of gasoline fell by 96,000 barrels per day to 557,000 barrels per day.…Even after twenty-four gasoline inventory decreases over the past thirty-six weeks, our gasoline supplies were 8.2% above than last October 28th's gasoline inventories of 206,633,000 barrels, and about 2% above the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
With this week's decrease in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels fell for the twentieth time in thirty-four weeks, decreasing by 792,000 barrels to 111,295,000 barrels over the week ending October 27th, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 1.686,000 barrels during the prior week. Our distillates supplies fell by less this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, fell by 387,000 barrels per day to 3,682,000 barrels per day, while our exports of distillates rose by 61,000 barrels per day to 1,082,000 barrels per day, and while our imports of distillates fell by 41,000 barrels per day to 71,000 barrels per day....But with 40 inventory increases over the past seventy-six weeks, our distillates supplies at the end of the week were still 4.2% above the 106,784 ,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on October 28th of 2022, while they were also about 12% below the five year average of our distillates inventories for this time of the year...
Finally, with our oil imports higher, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage rose for the 10th time in twenty-six weeks and for the 26th time in the past year, increasing by 773,000 barrels over the week, from 421,120,000 barrels on October 20th to 421,893,000 barrels on October 27th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 1.372,000 barrels over the prior week. Even with those increases, our commercial crude oil inventories were still about 5% below the most recent five-year average of commercial oil supplies for this time of year, but were still about 23.0% above the average of our available crude oil stocks as of the last weekend of October over the 5 years at the beginning of the past decade, with the big difference between those comparisons arising because it wasn’t until early 2015 that our oil inventories had first topped 400 million barrels. After our commercial crude oil inventories had jumped to record highs during the Covid lockdowns of the Spring of 2020, then jumped again after February 2021's winter storm Uri froze off US Gulf Coast refining, but then fell in the wake of the Ukraine war, only to jump again following the Christmas 2022 refinery freeze offs, our commercial crude supplies as of this October 27th were 3.4% less than the 436,830,000 barrels of oil in commercial storage on October 28th of 2022, were 2.1% less than the 430,812,000 barrels of oil that we still had in storage on October 29th of 2021, and were 12.9% less than the 484,429,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on October 30th of 2020, after early pandemic precautions had left a lot of oil unused…
This Week's Rig Count
in lieu of details on the rig count, we are again just including below a screenshot of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes...in the table below, the first column shows the active rig count as of November 3rd, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (October 27th) and this week’s (November 3rd) count, the third column shows last week’s October 27th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and the number running on the Friday before the same weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was the 4th of November, 2022...
Note the increase of two natural gas rigs in the Utica shale; by checking the North America Rotary Rig Count Pivot Table from Baker Hughes, we can determine that one of the new rigs was a directional rig targeting the Utica at a depth of over 15,000 feet in Belmont county, and the other was a horizontal rig targeting the Utica, also at a depth of more than 15,000 feet, in Noble county...the details on the 12 rigs drilling in Ohio’s Utica as of November 3rd are shown below:
- MONROE Horizontal >15k
- MONROE Horizontal >15k
- MONROE Horizontal >15k
- NOBLE Horizontal 5k-10k
- NOBLE Horizontal >15k
- TUSCARAWAS Horizontal >15k
- COLUMBIANA Horizontal >15k
- GUERNSEY Horizontal >15k
- CARROLL Horizontal >15k
- BELMONT Directional >15k
- BELMONT Horizontal >15k
- BELMONT Horizontal >15k
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gas leak causes evacuation of 40 homes in East Palestine: Fire chief -(WKBN) — Residents of East Palestine were able to return home after a gas leak led to the evacuation of around 40 homes on Wednesday, officials confirm.According to East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick, crews were working on replacing water lines when they hit a gas line, causing the leak Wednesday afternoon. An evacuation was ordered for the homes spanning two blocks, from East Street to Thomas Street. The gas leak has been repaired, and the area has been reopened, according to Drabick.
Fracking, hunting don't mix — lease should be denied - The Herald Star - by Randi Pokladnik - Many hunters are entering wooded areas in Ohio in search of deer, turkey and pheasants. One of the most popular places to hunt are Ohio’s public lands, especially parks and wildlife areas in the Southeastern portion of the state.Among the top ten counties for deer harvests in the 2022-23 season were: Coshocton (7,590), Tuscarawas (7,028), Muskingum (5,982), Guernsey (5,073), and Carroll (4,251).The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported that “hunters from all 50 U.S. states purchased deer permits in Ohio for use in the 2022-23 seasons with Pennsylvania hunters topping the list, buying 9,365 permits.”The hunting community adds significant amounts of money to Ohio’s economy each year, spending nearly $866 million on food, equipment, lodging, fuel, and other merchandise. A report by the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation estimates that close to half a million hunters participate in recreational hunting each year in Ohio, which translates to “15,500 jobs, $68 million in state and local taxes, and $753 million of the state’s GDP.”Why would Ohio’s Oil and Gas Land Management Commission want to jeopardize an activity that provides so much revenue for the state, and enjoyment for Ohio residents and out-of-state residents? Why would this commission even consider fracking excellent hunting areas like Guernsey County’s Salt Fork State Park or Carroll County’s Valley Run Wildlife Area?These areas located above Marcellus and Utica shale deposits provide habitat for hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. The most obvious effects of gas extraction are fragmentation and loss of habitat.Fracking requires the complete clearing of land for well pads, infrastructure, pipelines, and roads. This means acres of forested lands are lost as they become asphalted over, clear-cut, or covered in gravel. In order to restore areas to the original forests, they must be regraded, topsoil needs to be added, and native species should be replanted. But this type of reclamation is expensive and not regulated, and often the only reclamation that is done is reseeding areas with non-native grass species.Forest fragmentation from endless pipelines and access roads leads to the introduction of invasive species, the disruption of predator-prey relationships, drops in migratory bird species, and a reduction of core-forest habitat. We also know that fracking fluid and waste releases can be toxic to fish and wildlife, as noted by the spill that occurred in 2007 at Acorn Fork Creek in Kentucky which killed numerous fish species including the “protected” blackside dace.Additionally, surface waters, including local streams, are impacted by water withdraws that lower water volume, create temperature increases, change pH, and amplify water pollutants.A hunter described hunting this way: “it offers an understanding and appreciation of wildlife and their ecosystems like no other outdoor activity. Hunting affords the exploration of wild places, and provides delicious, nutritious protein for a meal at a time where much of our food is processed or modified.”How will hunters feel about hunting at Salt Fork State Park when fracking brings light pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, and air pollution to a place that was once wild?Tell the commission to deny the leases for Ohio Parks. Their email is commission.clerk@oglmc.ohio.gov.
DT Midstream 3Q: Ohio Utica Sys Almost Done, NEXUS Adds 50 MMcf/d - Marcellus Drilling News -DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions (like the Haynesville). DTM issued its third quarter 2023 update yesterday. Items related to the M-U of note is that construction of the Ohio Utica System, a new greenfield gathering system in the Ohio Utica for EOG Resources, is progressing ahead of schedule with an expected in-service date of 1Q24. DTM also announced the NEXUS Pipeline added approximately 50 MMcf/d of additional leased capacity in 3Q.
Gulfport 3Q – Huge Profit, Focused on Utica, No SCOOP Drilling | Marcellus Drilling News - Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), emerged from bankruptcy in May 2021 with a new board and top management. In January of this year, the company appointed a new CEO, John Reinhart, the former President and CEO of M-U driller Montage Resources Corporation before Southwestern Energy gobbled up that company (see Marcellus Veteran John Reinhart Joins Gulfport Energy as CEO). Yesterday, Gulfport issued its third quarter 2023 update. The company made a whopping $608 million in net income during 3Q23 versus losing $18 million in 3Q22. Gulfport’s net income was orders of magnitude higher than Chesapeake Energy’s, which is a much larger company!
Pennsylvania to partner with natural gas driller on in-depth study of air and water monitoring amid new regulatory push– WFMJ - The state of Pennsylvania will work with a major natural gas producer to collect in-depth data on air emissions and water quality at well sites, enhance public disclosure of drilling chemicals and expand buffer zones, the governor announced Thursday, touting the collaboration as the first of its kind.CNX Resources Corp., based in Canonsburg, will partner with the state Department of Environmental Protection on intensive environmental monitoring at two future well sites throughout all stages of the drilling and fracking process — a data-collection exercise that could be used to drive future policy changes, according to Gov. Josh Shapiro.The announcement comes amid ongoing concerns about the potential environmental and health effects of fracking, and more than three years after a grand jury concluded that state regulators had failed to properly oversee the state's huge gas-drilling industry.“Pennsylvanians want us to do everything we can to help keep them and their families safe," Shapiro said Thursday at a news conference at a CNX well pad in Washington County, in the state’s southwest corner. "I believe to do that, we need to bring transparency to this process, collect more data so we can ensure that we have the necessary and appropriate protections in place."State officials say they expect the monitoring program to “definitively measure” emissions at well sites. Some environmental groups were skeptical. One, Food & Water Watch, criticized Shapiro for “striking bogus partnerships to give frackers a public relations victory" instead of taking action to “rein in corporate polluters.”Under its voluntary agreement with the state, CNX will report air quality data on a new website, beginning with one of its existing wells in Washington County and eventually expanding to its entire Pennsylvania operation. The company also agreed to disclose the chemicals it plans to use at a well site before the start of drilling and fracking.And it will expand setbacks from the state-required 500 feet (152 meters) to 600 feet (183 meters) at all drilling sites, and increase them to 2,500 feet (762 meters) for schools, hospitals and other sensitive sites during the data-collection period.The company has drilled more than 500 wells in the vast Marcellus Shale natural gas field. Pennsylvania is the nation’s No. 2 gas-producing state after Texas.Nick Deiuliis, CNX’s president and CEO, who joined Shapiro at the event, said the company is committed to “radical transparency” in an effort to enhance public trust and improve operations.“When we see something unexpected or atypical, we’re prepared and committed to acting in a way where we engineer and design our way to even better performance," said Deiuliis, calling on other companies to follow suit. He said he expected the data to “definitively confirm for all stakeholders that there are no adverse human health issues related to responsible natural gas development.”Shapiro, a Democrat in his first term as governor, was the state's attorney general in 2020 when a grand jury concluded after a two-year investigation that state regulators had failed to prevent Pennsylvania’s natural gas drilling industry from sickening people and poisoning air and water. The panel issued eight recommendations, none of which have been enacted legislatively.Shapiro announced Thursday that he's instructed regulators to use their existing authority to implement some of the recommendations, including new requirements for the public disclosure of drilling chemicals and stronger standards for drilling-waste disposal and pipeline corrosion control. Environmental groups were split on Thursday’s announcement. The head of the Pennsylvania Environment Council appeared at the news conference and spoke in support, and two other groups, PennEnvironment and the Clean Air Council, released statements praising Shapiro’s regulatory moves as a step in the right direction. But Megan McDonough, state director of Food & Water Watch Pennsylvania, said that “Shapiro’s toothless monitoring scheme is outrageous and embarrassing.”“We are well past the point of needing new studies to tell us what we already know: Fracking has sickened frontline communities, contaminated water supplies, and increased air and climate pollution,” she said.The Better Path Coalition, an alliance of Pennsylvania grassroots groups that oppose the fossil fuel industry, blasted Shapiro for taking what it called “half-measures” on drilling, and for having faith in CNX, which it called a “recidivist methane gas driller” that regulators have cited with more than 30 violations this year alone.
26 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Oct 23 – 29 | Marcellus Drilling News -- New shale permits issued for Oct 23 – 29 in the Marcellus/Utica increased again. There were 26 new permits issued last week, versus 22 the week before. Last week’s permit tally included 18 new permits in Pennsylvania, 7 new permits in Ohio, and 1 new permit in West Virginia. Coterra Energy was the top permittee for the week, drawing 7 permits in Susquehanna County, PA. Chesapeake Energy was #2 with 5 permits issued in Sullivan County, PA. ASCENT RESOURCES | BUTLER COUNTY | CARROLL COUNTY | CHESAPEAKE ENERGY | COTERRA ENERGY (CABOT O&G) | EQT CORP | GULFPORT ENERGY | HARRISON COUNTY | INR | OHIO COUNTY | PENNENERGY RESOURCES | PEN RANGE RESOURCES CORP | SOUTHWESTERN ENERGY |SULLIVAN COUNTY | SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY | WASHINGTON COUNTY
Gulfport Energy's Entire M-U Operation Gets “A” on MiQ Report Card - Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), is the latest Marcellus/Utica driller to have its gas certified by MiQ. After a thorough review, MiQ gave Gulfport’s operations and the natural gas it produces its highest grade of “A.” Gulfport, which drills in both the Ohio Utica and Oklahoma SCOOP shale plays, has drilled some of (perhaps THE) longest shale wells in the world at over four miles long (seeGulfport’s 4-Mile Utica Wells Producing 2.5+ Bcfe per 1,000 Ft).
Antero Sees LNG, Power Burn and Muted Production Growth Boosting Natural Gas Prices - The management team of Antero Resources Corp. expects a slew of demand and supply side factors to align in a bullish pattern for U.S. natural gas prices over the next year. CEO Paul Rady outlined his reasoning upon announcing third quarter earnings for the Appalachian Basin pure-play. “On the macro front, we see natural gas storage levels normalizing on the back of record natural gas power burn, strong LNG exports and U.S. natural gas exported through pipelines to Mexico,” said Rady. “At the same time, we anticipate that U.S. production growth will be limited in the coming months following the dramatic decrease in drilling rigs.
Chesapeake Prepared to Expand Natural Gas Drilling in 2024 Ahead of LNG Export Growth - Chesapeake Energy Corp. has turned to another global commodity trader to help expose more of its U.S. natural gas production to international markets, inking a tentative deal with Vitol Inc. to sell up to 1 million metric tons/year (mmty) of LNG. The heads of agreement (HOA) follows one that Chesapeake signed earlier this year with commodity trader Gunvor Group Ltd. to sell up to 2 mmty of liquefied natural gas. “The participants in this market are very, very large,” said Chesapeake CEO Nick Dell’Osso in explaining why the company chose Vitol and Gunvor for the HOAs. “The majors participate in this market and the big commodities traders participate in this market on a daily basis. I think in order to be competitive there, you need to be part of a pool of volumes that can...
Mountain Valley Pipeline project growing as variance requests pile up - The Mountain Valley Pipeline has not developed according to plan. First announced in 2014, the gas pipeline once targeted an in-service date of 2018. Five years past that target, the pipeline is still under construction, beset by legal challenges rooted in environmental issues that project opponents say are far from resolved.But even with the 303.5-mile pipeline’s legal path cleared by an act of Congress, the now $7.2 billion project is coming up with change after change in plans.Federal regulators have approved 15 variance requests for the pipeline since Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. lifted a lower court’s hold on key federal approvals for the project in late July.Most of the requests approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission were for project plan changes in West Virginia, where the pipeline route travels through 11 counties before crossing into Virginia. The approved deviations cover over 19 acres, including requests to increase right-of-way access, withdraw water from streams in seven West Virginia counties, and add work space for equipment storage and parking.Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the joint venture behind the 42-inch-diameter pipeline, filed three more variance requests on Monday alone.The requests come as pipeline opponents urge another federal agency, the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to host public hearings on an agreement the agency struck with the project’s lead developer requiring corrective measures amid longstanding pipe safety concerns. Mountain Valley variance requests go back more than five years, as the project has been bogged down by legal and regulatory challenges rooted in the project’s water pollution and erosion issues. But Congress fast-tracked the project’s completion through a provision in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, legislation designed chiefly to avoid a national default by raising the country’s debt ceiling. law compelled the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in June to issue all permits needed to finish construction of the pipeline within three weeks. Since Roberts lifted stays barring construction of the pipeline following Fiscal Responsibility Act passage, work on the pipeline has ramped up, resulting in the variance requests. One Mountain Valley variance request approved since then sought impacts to over 6 acres for a temporary access road and additional, temporary workspaces to increase constructability on steep slopes at Lick Creek in Summers County.Another approved request sought permission to place pumps needed for waterbody crossings outside limits of disturbance for stream crossings in Wetzel, Harrison, Nicholas, Greenbrier, Summers and Monroe counties. Other post-Fiscal Responsibility Act variance requests approved by the FERC for the pipeline have included relocating a Nicholas County access road due to two streams causing persistent flooding and lack of readily available power at the site; adding a spur of an access road to increase right-of-way access for a Greenbrier County stream crossing; and withdrawing water from the Little Kanawha, Elk and Greenbrier rivers and other waterways to reduce dust emissions and provide water for seeding and stabilization. In a Mountain Valley request filed Monday, the company sought approval for an “after the fact variance” for relocating a cathodic protection ground bed within an existing permanent easement and redesignating a temporary access road as permanent in Greenbrier County. Cathodic protection is an approach to preventing corrosion of buried metal pipelines that includes connecting metal to be protected to a more easily corroded metal.In a proposed safety order notice issued in August resolved by an agreement it struck this month with the pipeline’s lead developer, the PHMSA noted some buried pipeline was installed without effective cathodic protection for at least two years, requiring extensive documentation of efforts to prevent and address corrosion.The other two requests filed Monday are for sites in Virginia. One is a request to change the configuration of five cathodic protection ground beds in Giles, Montgomery, Roanoke and Franklin counties, affecting 1.28 net acres. Mountain Valley said the changes are needed to avoid karst voids.The pipeline is designed to cross over 75 miles of slopes greater than 30%, an unusually high amount of pipeline over slopes that steep. West Virginia and Virginia environmentalist and community groups signed onto a letter submitted to the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last week calling for transparency measures regarding the agreement between the agency and the pipeline’s lead developer, Cecil Township, Pennsylvania-based Equitrans Midstream Corp. The groups asked the agency to host public hearings on the agreement, which critics say doesn’t adequately address corrosion issues that may come from pipe already installed in the ground. The groups asked for the hearings to have a virtual attendance option and post-event transcript, with outreach for the event including notification of directly impacted communities in advance of hearings. The National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators has recommended against aboveground storage of coated pipe for longer than six months without additional ultraviolet protection. But some of the pipe slated for use in constructing the Mountain Valley Pipeline has been lying uninstalled along the route for years.
MVP to Rank Among ‘Most Valuable Pipelines’ in U.S., Says Equitrans CEO - Equitrans Midstream Corp. management remains upbeat about the long-term fundamentals underpinning the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) despite recently postponing the project’s expected in-service date and upwardly revising its projected cost. Canonsburg, PA-based Equitrans has moved the targeted start-up date for the embattled 2 Bcf/d natural gas conduit to early 2024 from late 2023, and the project budget has risen to $7.2 billion from $6.6 billion. The pipeline would offer sorely needed takeaway from the Appalachian Basin, one of the world’s largest developed sources of natural gas. “Once in-service, there is little doubt MVP will be one of the most valuable pipelines in the U.S., directly connecting our country’s largest and lowest-cost natural gas resource and the... © 2023 Natural Gas Intelligence. All rights reserved.
Snapper Creek Fishing for Advantage with Natural Gas, NGL and Carbon Credits Brokerage - A veteran team of commodities traders is barely two weeks into the launch of brokerage Snapper Creek Energy, with executives already eyeing an expansion overseas early next year. Helmed by CEO Sid Perkins, the Miami-based commodities brokerage launched in mid-October to trade physical natural gas, natural gas liquids (NGL) and carbon credits. Perkins, a former executive with ION Energy Group, which he founded in 2008, recently shared his vision for Snapper Creek in a wide-ranging interview with NGI. In the simplest terms, Perkins saw a “critical need” for a brokerage that would help clients “navigate shifting market complexities with speed and certainty.” The broad energy transition to a zero-carbon economy may be more than a decade away, but it already is driving market...
US weekly LNG exports reach 27 cargoes - US liquefaction plants shipped 27 liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes in the week ending October 25, while natural gas deliveries to these terminals dropped by 4.1 percent compared to the week before.Last week, the US Energy Information Administration said that 29 LNG carriers departed the US plants between October 11 and October 18.The agency said that last week’s LNG vessel count included five vessels that departed US LNG terminals on Wednesday, October 11, but were not included in the vessel count for the previous report week.This means that US terminals shipped three more cargoes between October 19 and October 25 compared to the week of October 12 and October 18. The total capacity of these 27 LNG vessels is 97 Bcf, the EIA said, citing shipping data provided by Bloomberg Finance.Average natural gas deliveries to US LNG export terminals fell by 4.1 percent (0.6 Bcf/d) week over week, averaging 13.7 Bcf/d, according to data from S&P Global Commodity InsightsNatural gas deliveries to terminals in South Texas declined by 2.9 percent (0.1 Bcf/d) to 4.1 Bcf/d.The agency said that natural gas deliveries to terminals in South Louisiana declined by 4.4 percent (0.4 Bcf/d) to 8.5 Bcf/d, and natural gas deliveries to terminals outside the Gulf Coast decreased by 2.6 percent (less than 0.1 Bcf/d) to 1.1 Bcf/d.Cheniere’s Sabine Pass plant shipped nine cargoes and the company’s Corpus Christi facility sent four shipments during the period under review.The Freeport LNG terminal sent five cargoes and Sempra Infrastructure’s Cameron LNG terminal and Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass each shipped three cargoes during the week under review.Also, the Cove Point LNG terminal shipped two cargoes and the Elba Island LNG facility sent one cargo between October 19 and October 25. This report week, the Henry Hub spot price decreased 4 cents from $2.90 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) last Wednesday to $2.86/MMBtu this Wednesday, the agency said.Moreover, the price of the November 2023 NYMEX contract decreased 4.6 cents, from $3.056/MMBtu last Wednesday to $3.010/MMBtu this Wednesday.According to the agency, the price of the 12-month strip averaging November 2023 through October 2024 futures contracts declined 6 cents to $3.315/MMBtu.Bloomberg Finance reported that weekly average front-month futures prices for LNG cargoes in East Asia increased $1.71 to a weekly average of $18.21/MMBtu.Natural gas futures for delivery at the Dutch TTF decreased 12 cents to a weekly average of $15.65/MMBtu.In the same week last year (week ending October 26, 2022), the prices were $31.52/MMBtu in East Asia and $31.61/MMBtu at TTF, the EIA said.
U.S. LNG Traffic Faces Further Pressure from Panama Canal Limits Amid Drought – The Offtake - The Panama Canal Authority said this week that it would reduce the number of vessels that can transit the waterway from 32 to 25 on Nov. 3. Daily transits would be further cut to 24 on Nov. 8, 22 on Dec. 1, 20 on Jan. 1 and 18 on Feb. 1. The reductions come amid a drought and what the authority said was the driest month since 1950. The cuts could limit the number of tankers moving LNG from U.S. export terminals to Asia and force cargoes to take longer, costlier routes. China-based Foran Energy Group Co. Ltd. has inked a heads of agreement with Cheniere Energy Inc. for 0.86 million metric tons/year (mmty) for 20 years. Deliveries on a free-on-board basis could start in 2028 and are expected to be linked to Henry Hub.
Natural Gas Said in ‘Supply Purgatory’ in 2024 Before Deficit, LNG Export Boom Take Hold - North American natural gas markets face the risk of oversupply in 2024 if winter comes in mild amid prodigious production gains. However, the gates are set to swing open for surging LNG exports in 2025 that could support prices out to 2030, analysts said. Lower 48 gas in storage is amply supplied ahead of winter, with a surplus of 183 Bcf to the five-year average after the latest injection for the week ended Oct. 20. Production notched a new record around 104 Bcf/d a week ago, keeping a leash on New York Mercantile Exchange futures from straying far from the $3.000/MMBtu level. “From a near-term perspective, we’re on a little bit of a rollercoaster ride where, provided a warm winter shows up, prices are going to have to get worse before they get better,” said East Daley...
Freeport LNG gets OK to start commissioning second jetty - Freeport LNG, the operator of the three-train 15 mtpa liquefaction plant in Texas, has secured approval from the US FERC to start commissioning its second jetty. In February this year, the LNG terminal operator shipped the first cargo from its LNG export plant in Texas since the shutdown in June 2022. Freeport LNG received approvals from both FERC and PHMSA during the first quarter to restart Phase I operations. These consist of three trains, two LNG storage tanks (tanks 1 and 2), and a single LNG jetty (dock 1). However, these approvals did not grant Freeport LNG to commission or place LNG tank 3, loop 2, and dock 2 back into service. In order to continue Freeport’s sequential plan to return the export facility to full commercial operations, Freeport recently requested approval from FERC for the nitrogen cooldown of the loop 2 LNG rundown piping system and the introduction of hydrocarbons to loop 2 to complete its cooldown and commissioning. FERC said in filling dated October 27 that it has granted Freeport LNG’s request to start “commissioning, including cooldown, of Loop 2 LNG transfer piping, Dock 2, and the 8-inch LNG recirculation piping.” The regulator said additional authorization to restart operations is necessary to reinstate service for loop 2 LNG circulation to enable ship loading to dock 2. “Authorization will only be granted following the review of filed responses, a determination that the facilities are fit for service, and documentation that acceptable measures have been put into place to safely return the facilities to operation,” it said.
China's Foran says to ink long-term LNG supply deal with Cheniere - Chinese gas firm Foran Energy said it plans to buy liquefied natural gas from US LNG exporter Cheniere under a new long-term deal.The firm said in a statement that its board of directors has approved the signing of a 20-year LNG SPA with Cheniere Marketing, a unit of Cheniere.According to Foran, the firm plans to purchase about 0.86 million tons of LNG per year on a FOB basis and the supply is expected to begin from 2028.Foran said the Henry Hub-linked LNG deal will also include a liquefaction fee.It did not say when the two firms will sign the SPA.Back in 2021, Cheniere signed a binding 20-year LNG supply deal with Foran.Under this deal, Foran has agreed to buy about 0.3 mtpa of LNG from Cheniere Marketing on a delivered ex-ship basis for a term of 20 years beginning in January 2023.Cheniere operates two LNG export terminals and is the largest LNG exporter in the US.The company’s Sabine Pass plant currently has a capacity of about 30 mtpa following the launch of the sixth train in February last year.In February this year, Cheniere initiated the pre-filing review process with the US FERC for the proposed Sabine Pass Stage 5 expansion project with a capacity of some 20 mtpa.On the other hand, Cheniere’s Corpus Christi liquefaction plant consists of three operational trains with each having a capacity of about 5 mtpa.In June last year, Cheniere took a final investment decision on the Corpus Christi Stage 3 expansion project worth about $8 billion and officially started construction on the project in October.The project includes building seven midscale trains, each with an expected liquefaction capacity of about 1.49 mtpa.Cheniere is expecting to complete the expansion phase at its Corpus Christi plant ahead of schedule.
Baker Hughes to book $9 billion of LNG equipment orders in 2022/2023 - US energy services firm Baker Hughes is on track to book almost $9 billion of LNG equipment orders across 2022 and 2023, the company’s executives said during the third-quarter earnings call. Following record LNG equipment orders of some $3.5 billion in 2022, Baker Hughes booked $1.4 billion in LNG equipment orders in the first quarter this year and $900 million in the second quarter. During the third quarter, Bake Hughes booked almost $2.5 billion of LNG equipment orders. “Major awards during the quarter included liquefaction equipment for an FLNG project in the Eastern Hemisphere and a major award to provide additional liquefaction equipment and a power island to Venture Global LNG”, Nancy Buese, Baker Hughes CFO, told analysts during the company’s earnings call on October 26. Baker Hughes recently secured a “major” contract from compatriot LNG exporter Venture Global to provide a modularized liquefied natural gas (LNG) system and power island. The contract was awarded under a master equipment supply agreement between Venture Global and Baker Hughes for more than 100 million tons per annum of production capacity, which was recently expanded from 70 mtpa. During the second quarter, Baker Hughes secured an order for three main refrigerant compressors for NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG project in Texas. Baker Hughes also recently booked a contract worth more than $400 million ford Adnoc’s planned LNG export terminal in Al Ruwais. Baker Hughes said it will book this contract in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Oneok Touts Natural Gas Volume Growth, Expansion Opportunities in Lower 48 - Natural gas gathering, processing and transportation remain a focal point for Oneok Inc.’s growth plans despite recently closing a major acquisition focused on crude oil and refined products. Oneok saw 12% year/year growth in natural gas processing volumes during the third quarter, CEO Pierce Norton said during a conference call to discuss the Tulsa-based midstreamer’s quarterly results. Oneok continues to see “robust producer activity across our operations with North Dakota natural gas production reaching a new all-time high in August,” Norton added. The company’s natural gas and natural gas liquids infrastructure serves a wide swath of the Lower 48 including the Williston, Powder River, Denver-Julesburg and Permian basins. Oneok also serves Oklahoma’s South Central region...
Another Utility Sheds its Gas Pipelines - The Wall Street Journal - Entergy shares are getting a jolt after the utility said it has agreed to sell its natural-gas distribution business serving New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La. to investment firm Bernhard Capital Partners for $484 million. It's the latest utility to part with its gas pipeline networks amid mounting efforts to phase out in-home use of the fossil fuel and fears that gas infrastructure could become stranded assets.Dominion Energy said last month that it would sell $9.4 billion of natural-gas assets in Ohio, North Carolina and several Western states to Canada's Enbridge in order to focus on renewable energy and improving its electrical grid. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that National Grid was also exploring a sale of its gas assets in the Northeast.
Advocates Question Biden Administration’s Promises to Address Environmental Injustices While Supporting Fossil Fuel Projects - —Environmental justice advocates sharply criticized the Biden administration during the Department of Energy’s Justice Week 2023 conference on Wednesday for approving new export terminals for liquified natural gas on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas, saying pollution from those fossil fuel facilities will further endanger disadvantaged communities. At the same time, across town at the White House, Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said on a conference call with community groups and reporters that nearly 470 federal programs with billions of dollars in annual investment were being “reimagined and transformed to meet the Justice40 goal and maximize benefits to disadvantaged communities.” Justice40 is President Biden’s policy, established by executive order, directing 40 percent of new environmental and energy investments to “disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized and overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.” Mallory was joined on the call by Tony Reames, principal deputy director of DOE’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs, who said from Detroit that the department is striving to decrease the energy burden, lessen environmental exposures, increase parity in clean energy technology access and adoption in environmental justice communities. But DOE officials got an earful at the department’s Justice Week conference from activists on its Community Voices from the Ground panel, who noted that the department was poised to grant a new export license to Energy Transfer’s Lake Charles LNG project in Southwest Louisiana after approving several new LNG export terminals in Texas. “The Biden administration is speaking out of both sides of their mouth,” said Roishetta Ozane, fossil fuel finance campaigner with the Texas Campaign for the Environment. “They say they care about frontline and environmental justice communities, but they have yet to address the fact that the air we breathe is making us sick, giving us asthma and skin conditions.” Ozane added that these LNG facilities disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income neighborhoods and contribute to climate change. “The DOE needs to reevaluate its approval process and show a real commitment to environmental justice. Enough is enough,” she said. John Beard, founder and director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network, asked the agency to stop advancing mega-polluting projects in marginalized communities of color. “DOE says it is committed to promoting environmental justice in all its activities. And yet, the agency continues to grant export authorizations to methane gas export terminals, explosive carbon bombs, in low-income communities and communities of color,” he said. The advocates also asked DOE to stop investing in hydrogen hubs, carbon capture and sequestration technologies at refineries and utilities, and direct air carbon capture technology aimed at sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, calling them all “dangerous distractions.” Producing hydrogen requires large amounts of energy ”that will worsen the effects of climate change while allowing big oil and gas to reap more profits while our children get sick, our air is polluted, and our safety is compromised,” Beard said. “Biden and the DOE must immediately halt the further expansion of hydrogen and export facilities, end air pollution, and restore devastated communities. This is the only solution.”
Sale of federal oil and gas leases in Gulf of Mexico off again pending hearings on whale protections (AP) — An upcoming sale of federal Gulf of Mexico oil and gas leases was officially postponed Thursday amid legal fights over protections for an endangered species of whale. A federal appellate panel last week paused a separate appeals panel’s order that the sale be held next Wednesday. Oil industry advocates had pressed President Joe Biden’s administration to go ahead with the sale anyway. But the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it was postponing the event because of the legal uncertainties heading into a Nov. 13 appeals court hearing. The lease sale, called for in 2022 climate legislation that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, was announced earlier this year. The available tracts covered a broad area of Gulf waters off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It was originally scheduled for Sept. 27. But BOEM announced in August that it was scaling back the amount of acreage oil companies would be allowed to bid on from 73 million acres (30 million hectares) to 67 million acres (27 million hectares). That followed a proposed legal settlement between the administration and environmentalists in a lawsuit over protections for an endangered whale species. Oil companies and the state of Louisiana objected to the reduction, setting off a still-brewing legal battle.A federal judge in southwest Louisiana ordered the sale to go on at its original scale, without the whale protections, which also included regulations involving vessel speed and personnel. That led to an appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.In late September, a panel of that court refused to block the federal judge’s order but amended it to push the sale back to Nov. 8, so the administration would have more time to prepare. But last week, a different panel stayed that order and set a hearing on the merits of the case for Nov. 13. Oil industry representatives and industry supporters in Congress pressed BOEM to hold the full-sized sale on Nov. 8 despite the lack of a court resolution. Senate energy committee Chairman Joe Manchin, the conservative West Virginia Democrat who has clashed with Biden and other fellow Democrats on energy policy, and the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming both said the sale should go on. But the administration made the latest delay official in a Thursday statement.
Advanced nuclear technology has role in Permian --Think nuclear energy and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima may quickly come to mind. But those involved in nuclear energy insist that the nuclear energy space has significantly evolved in terms of technology and safety.And proponents of nuclear energy are bringing their case to the Permian Basin, the heart of oil and natural gas production, to make their case.The discussion should not be about oil and natural gas but about energy – all energy, said Chris Wright, chief executive officer of Liberty Energy. He brought the founder of Oklo, which builds small modular reactors, along with Oklo’s head of business development, to Midland this week to discuss their reactor technology. His company has made a $10 million investment in Oklo.The reasons were twofold, Wright told the Reporter-Telegram. “This is the shale oil and gas capital of the world, with the people who are leaders in the industry,” he said. “(If) the energy dialogue is about improving lives, these are the people I want engaged in that dialogue.”The second reason is the growing electrification of the oilpatch – from drilling rigs to frac fleets – and the need to be able to access that electricity in the Permian Basin, he said.Jake DeWitte, Oklo founder, agreed, telling the Reporter-Telegram that as the Permian Basin oilpatch becomes increasingly electrified, the challenge to meet that demand will grow. The small modular reactors Oklo manufactures will help close that transmission gap and reduce stress on the grid, he said. And because these reactors require much less space and are less expensive to build, he said they can be deployed to areas where the population doesn’t have access to any electricity or to reliable, affordable, abundant electricity. The technology also utilizes recycled fuel, converting used nuclear fuel into clean energy. Oklo is preparing to deploy its first reactors, known as the Aurora Powerhouse, beginning in 2027, having received approval for its Quality Assurance Program Description from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company has also submitted updated combined license application for its first reactor as well as subsequent applications for additional reactors, Brian Gitt, Oklo’s head of business development, said.“Nuclear is going to dominate electric generation,” Gitt predicted. “Oil and natural gas are the foundation of civilization. I see these as synergistic technologies.”
Oil and gas companies spill millions of gallons of wastewater in Texas - The prolific oil and gas wells of Texas also generate billions of gallons of salty liquid known as produced water. A lot of this toxic water, just like crude oil, tends to get spilled. Not just occasionally, but hundreds of times a year. From a large spill of 756,000 gallons into the Delaware River in West Texas that sent chloride levels soaring, to hundreds of small spills in one Permian Basin county, there’s hardly a corner of Texas not impacted. But messy record-keeping and ambiguous rules at the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas drilling, have long obscured the scope and severity of these spills from the public.The Railroad Commission has never formally adopted 2009 draft guidelines for reporting and cleaning up produced water spills. The agency delegated the authority to set different reporting thresholds to district offices, in a system that relies on self-reporting by offenders and includes little enforcement to assure accuracy and compliance.A commission spokesperson said that produced water spills must be reported and that the agency fully investigates and mitigates all spills. But the agency has never adopted official produced water spill guidelines and numerous companies are under the impression they are not required to report spills at all.Inside Climate News has conducted the first-ever public analysis of produced water spills in Texas, working from data provided in response to open records requests to the Railroad Commission.Over the decade from 2013 and 2022, the analysis found that oil and gas companies reported more than 10,000 individual spills totaling more than 148 million gallons of produced water. Where possible, companies use vacuum trucks to suck up as much spilled water as they can. But only about 40 percent of the water reported spilled from 2013 to 2022 was recovered.The spills ranged from small leaks of less than 10 gallons to massive incidents—19 of the reported spills exceeded 500,000 gallons. Although they represented a tiny minority of spills, with about 350 reported in the data, some of the most damaging incidents took place when produced water was spilled directly into streams, rivers or lakes.Both conventional oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rely upon large quantities of water, sand and proprietary chemicals, some of which are toxic, to free the oil and gas from geologic formations deep underground. Produced water is the liquid waste that comes back to the surface and contains both the proprietary drilling fluids and naturally occurring hazardous compounds from the earth, including arsenic and organic compounds like benzene, a carcinogen.The highly saline water can render land barren for years. Residents have filed lawsuits detailing damages from contaminated well water to poisoned cattle.In East Texas’ Anderson County, cattle rancher Tate Willfong noticed a produced water spill on his property from Vista Energy Consulting’s pipeline in July that killed the grass his cattle graze on. He said he reported the spills to the Railroad Commission but only got help after he went to a local television reporter at KETK in Tyler. Vista Energy Consulting did not respond to a request for comment.In Lamesa, the county seat of Dawson County in the high plains where Permian Basin oil production borders cotton farms and towering wind turbines, Doty Huff and Saul Torres filed a lawsuit against an energy firm named Enhanced Midstream, alleging that two leaks from one of the company’s produced water pipelines contaminated their well water and caused a “total loss of fair market value” of their property. Enhanced Midstream did not respond to multiple requests for comment.In Knox County, North of Abilene, rancher Tim Foote sued after his cattle knocked down a fence around a Texcel Exploration tank where produced water and oil was stored. The livestock came into contact with spilled produced water and 132 cattle died. An appeals court recently upheld a trial court’s decision that the company cannot be held responsible. “There’s a reason why you salted your enemy’s land in the Bible,” said Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas lawyer in the Permian Basin, who has documented damages from produced water spills. “Nothing grows.”
Energy firms spill large quantities of wastewater in Texas over last decade: report- (Xinhua) -- Oil and gas companies have spilled nearly 150 million gallons of wastewater in U.S. energy state Texas over the last decade, the Texas Tribune reported on Tuesday. From 2013 to 2022, these companies reported more than 10,000 individual spills totaling more than 148 million gallons of produced water, and only about 40 percent of the water reported spilled during this period was recovered, said the report, citing the first-ever public analysis of this kind conducted by the nonprofit Inside Climate News. The spills ranged from small leaks of less than 10 gallons to massive incidents, said the report, noting that 19 of the reported spills exceeded 500,000 gallons. Some of the most damaging incidents occurred when produced water was spilled directly into streams, rivers, or lakes, said the report. "From a large spill of 756,000 gallons into the Delaware River in West Texas that sent chloride levels soaring, to hundreds of small spills in one Permian Basin county, there's hardly a corner of Texas not impacted," the report lamented. Both conventional oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rely upon large quantities of water, sand and proprietary chemicals, some of which are toxic, to free the oil and gas from geologic formations deep underground, said the report. The highly saline water can render land barren for years. In parts of Texas, residents have filed lawsuits detailing damage from contaminated well water to poisoned cattle, the report added. A 2022 report calculated that the Permian Basin alone is generating 3.9 billion barrels, or over 168 billion gallons, of produced water a year. That means wastewater must be piped off well pads, stored in tanks, and trucked to disposal wells. As of July, Texas had more than 161,000 oil wells and 86,000 gas wells in production, according to the report. ■
Cleanup finished on big oil spill on the Keystone system — The operator of the Keystone pipeline system finished cleaning up a massive December 2022 oil spill, and the creek affected by it is flowing naturally again, the company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said this week. Pipeline operator TC Energy promised to continue monitoring the site along Mill Creek in Washington County, about 150 miles northwest of Kansas City. The Canada-based company and the EPA's regional office announced Tuesday that berms that diverted the creek around the spill site were removed. The EPA said Kansas' environmental agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also will continue to inspect the area for the next five years or "until it is determined that monitoring is no longer needed." The spill dumped almost 13,000 barrels of crude oil — each one enough to fill a standard household bathtub — into the creek as it ran through a rural pasture. The company said that it started "demobilization" at the site and, "expect to complete these activities by year end." The pipeline carries oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. The company reported in February that a faulty weld in a pipe bend caused a crack that grew over time under stress. An engineering consultant firm's report for U.S. pipeline regulators that became public in May cited pipeline design issues, lapses by its operators and problems caused during pipeline construction as factors in the spill. The consultants' report said the bend was "overstressed" since its installation in December 2010, likely because construction activity itself altered the land around the pipe. It was the largest onshore spill in almost nine years.
Over 650,000 gallons of oil recovered while cleaning up Kansas Keystone Pipeline spill --More than 650,000 gallons of oil were recovered during a cleanup effort in Kansas that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared complete on Tuesday.The Keystone Pipeline rupture detected on Dec. 7, 2022, near Washington, about 175 miles northwest of Kansas City, dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of crude oil into Mill Creek. The massive spill prompted a nearly 24/7 oil recovery phase which ended Jan. 29.Crews continued working on areas with submerged oil until May when efforts turned to stream restoration.The cleanup required treating more than 54 million gallons of contaminated surface water, which was discharged back into Mill Creek. About 200,000 tons of soil, sediment and other debris were excavated and removed, the EPA said in a news release.During a visual inspection on Oct. 13, officials said the creek was flowing naturally after a diversion system and berms were removed.The federal agency said staff spent more than 6,000 hours on the cleanup.The Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will continue to monitor the creek for the next five years or until they determine monitoring is no longer needed.A report released in May by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the rupture was caused by a combination of faulty welding and extreme pressure causing the pipeline, owned by TC Energy, to deform.It was the largest spill in the Keystone pipeline’s history and larger than all its previous 22 spills combined.
Halliburton grows electric fracking fleets in Q3 - Houston Business Journal - Halliburton is gradually retiring its diesel-powered hydraulic fracturing fleets in favor of natural gas-powered electric fleets. The Houston-based oil field services company signed on more e-fleet contracts in the third quarter 2023, even seeing a repeat customer, after signing more multi-year contracts for its Zeus fleet than in any prior quarter during Q2. “[I’m] very pleased with the trajectory that we see around e-fleets and they're performing very, very well. So that continues to sort of build up the confidence of the market and that technology,” CEO Jeff Miller said during the company’s Q3 earnings call. Miller added that the technology has a lower total cost of ownership than existing equipment, making it more successful than diesel fleets, which are also higher-emitters. Miller confirmed that while it is not a one-to-one ratio of adding e-fleets and retiring diesel fleets, the company has had the opportunity to retire diesel fleets this year as well. Even as some expect demand for oil to decrease soon — a new report from the International Energy Agency says global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal could all peak by 2030 — Miller is confident there will still be some need for the fleets. “There is no scenario where a large operator will not be fracking. Then it becomes, 'Why wouldn't you want that one fleet at least to be your lowest cost operating fleet because it's burning natural gas, it's emitting less, and it's working at the highest performance?'" Miller said. "At that point, this becomes a much easier discussion because it is the lowest cost operating fleet. It is extremely high efficiency and it lowers their overall cost." Miller, who sees growth for decades based on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ estimate that oil demand will increase by 10 million barrels before the end of the decade and continue growing through 2045, said he sees demand growth for oilfield services to focus in offshore markets. Halliburton posted net income attributable to the company of $716 million for Q3, slightly beating analysts projections and increasing from 31.6% from the third quarter last year. Revenue also increased by 8% year-over-year to $5.8 billion. Revenue growth was led by a 17.4% growth in international revenue growth on the year, led by increased activity in Latin America. “This is a great market for Halliburton to execute its strategy for profitable international growth. I'm excited about our international business, and we are on track to deliver high teens year-on-year growth in 2023. Looking ahead, 2024 is coming into view and I expect to see international activity, again, directionally higher with market growth in the double-digit range,” Miller said. North America revenue remained flat on the year and decreased 3% from the previous quarter, driven by decreased pressure pumping services in U.S. land and lower well intervention services in the Gulf of Mexico.
Schumer leads 23 senators in demanding FTC probe of oil industry mergers - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and 22 other Democratic senators sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan on Wednesday demanding an investigation of two major proposed oil industry mergers and warning that the consolidations could hurt consumers. Schumer and his colleagues want the FTC to investigate ExxonMobil’s proposed $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, and Chevron’s proposed $53 billion acquisition of Hess Corporation. “By allowing Exxon and Chevron to further integrate their extensive operations into important oil-and-gas fields, these deals are likely to harm competition, risking increased consumer prices and reduced output throughout the United States,” they wrote. They called on the FTC to consider various anti-competitive harms and urged the agency to oppose them if they would violate antitrust law. They noted that more than 2,600 mergers occurred through the U.S. petroleum industry in the 1990s, and the number of major U.S. energy companies dropped from 19 to 9 due to consolidation. “After these huge mergers took place, the majors’ upstream operations were skewed to the detriment of consumers. Studies at the time demonstrated that spending on drilling for new oil supplies by the merged giants fell significantly compared to the drilling budgets before the mergers,” the senators wrote. The signatories include Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Angus King (I-Maine), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), among others. Schumer highlighted the letter on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. “I think people should pay attention to this, because this is a very serious issue,” he said, calling the ExxonMobil and Chevron deals “two of the largest oil acquisitions of the 21st century.” “Some of the largest mergers in the history, in the whole history of the United States — where are they occurring? In the heavily concentrated oil industry, where the consumer has almost no say whatsoever. These deals have all the hallmarks of harmful, anti-competitive effect,” he warned.
Chevron-Hess deal may lift Bakken oil output, but no return to boom days - (Reuters) - Chevron's (CVX.N) deal announced last week to buy Hess (HES.N), one of the largest operators in the Bakken shale play in North Dakota, could raise oil output there marginally but analysts do not expect a return to its peak pre-pandemic boom days. New drilling technologies during the so-called Bakken Boom turned North Dakota into the nation's second-largest crude oil-producing state from 2012 to 2020. That No. 2 spot was taken over by New Mexico after the COVID-19 pandemic crushed oil demand and drilling activity. The Bakken formation, located along the Canadian border, is a long way from export terminals and refineries, which means producers have higher transport fees and typically smaller profits than their competitors in the giant Texan and New Mexican shale area that are closer to the main refining and export hubs on the Gulf Coast. Production in the higher-cost Bakken region is around 1.27 million barrels per day (bpd), nearly 18% below the late 2019 peak, according to U.S. government data. Hess produced 190,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) there during the third quarter this year, the company said on Wednesday in its earnings statement. Chevron's acquisition gives it that production and 465,000 net acres (1,882 sq km) in the region, which Chevron described as "long-duration inventory" when it announced the deal. Chevron is expected to largely adhere to Hess's plans for the Bakken, which included growing its net production there to about 200,000 boepd in 2025, analysts said. Drilling with the same number of rigs that Hess has used would give Chevron around 15 years of inventory in the region, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said when the deal was announced. "This is a very attractive asset that can deliver kind of plateau production, strong cash flow for many, many years to come," Wirth said. Chevron hopes that new technology it is pioneering in the other shale regions where it operates would help squeeze more from the Bakken in the future, he added. Chevron's entry also marks a cultural change in the state's energy industry. Hess has been part of the energy industry in North Dakota since 1951, and helped establish the state as a top shale oil and gas producer. Chevron could take Bakken production higher than the output targeted by Hess in the future, said Matthew Bernstein, a senior analyst at Rystad Energy. Given the breadth of their operations, larger integrated companies such as Chevron are under less pressure than shale producers to stick to modest target increases in every region they operate - so long as they keep providing shareholders with returns, Bernstein said. The Bakken is more consolidated and mature than regions such as the top U.S. oilfield - the Permian - and much smaller, so there is less scope to increase activity, Energy Aspects' Jessie Jones said. Break-even prices in the Bakken have been on average higher than other shale regions since 2019. Bakken half-cycle break-even prices, which include costs for transportation, income taxes and price differentials, on average are expected to be $58.86 per barrel in 2023, much lower than the $50.69 per barrel in the Permian basin's Midland region, according to Rystad Energy data. The Permian basin in Texas and New Mexico has surpassed its previous peaks and hit a record high this year of nearly 6 million bpd, Energy Information Administration data showed. Jones expects Bakken output to hit 1.3 million bpd this year, still a long way from the 1.54 million bpd pre-pandemic peak. It remains to be seen if renewed investment or a breakthrough in technology can prevent a longer-term decline in Bakken output. Bakken oil production could drop to 1.15 million bpd from 2026 and be flat through 2030, before entering gradual decline as inventory exhaustion sets in, said Nathan Nemeth, a principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Exxon scraps plan to replace pipeline from 2015 oil spill – LA Times -Central Coast environmentalists are celebrating ExxonMobil’s recent decision to scrap plans to replace miles of pipeline through Santa Barbara County, key to revitalizing a local network of petroleum energy production shuttered since the catastrophic 2015 Refugio oil spill. But at the same time, the oil giant has raised fresh concerns, saying it is instead exploring the possibility of repairing existing, damaged pipeline. The years-long effort by oil companies to replace two major segments of pipeline could have allowed the company to restart offshore oil platforms along Santa Barbara County’s coast and an onshore processing plant. These possibilities have been long reviled by local environmental groups and some residents, especially after the catastrophic 2015 spill, which continues to loom large in the region. “This [pipeline] replacement has been hanging over the community’s head for five years now,” said Jonathan Ullman, director of the Sierra Club’s Santa Barbara-Ventura chapter. “I was very happy to hear this news; it felt like their withdrawal signified that the writing was on the wall that they could not continue.”Ullman said the construction project — had it been approved — had major implications for the environment, wildlife and public health, with heightened risks of oil spills and increased fossil fuel emissions.The 2015 spill, caused by “extensive” corrosion on a section of pipeline, hemorrhaged more than 140,000 gallons of crude oil along the Gaviota Coast, much of which ended up in the ocean and along the region’s prized coastline, closing Refugio and El Capitan state beaches for weeks and affecting countless seabirds and marine life. Oil heavily coated a stretch of Santa Barbara County’s coast, with small tar balls reaching as far south as Redondo Beach in Los Angeles County.Officials for Pacific Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Texas-based ExxonMobil, wrote to Santa Barbara County leaders that it had found “the potential environmental impacts associated with the major construction of a second pipeline unnecessary and avoidable,” according to an Oct. 24 letter, withdrawing its proposal from the county’s permitting process.The letter, however, also opened the door for another complicated fight in Santa Barbara County, with Exxon officials announcing that the oil giant would change its focus from building replacement pipeline to trying to restore old, damaged pipeline.“Recent inspections and analysis affirms ... the existing pipeline can be responsibly restarted,” the letter said. It also mentioned that during the replacement pipeline’s environmental review, “staff from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicated that restart of the existing pipeline is likely the Least Environmentally Damaging Practical Alternative under the Federal Clean Water Act.”
Why Fossil Fuel Companies Can’t Leave Resources Stranded - Even as climate advocates call for eliminating fossil fuels, companies continue to launch major production plans. Earlier this year, for example, President Joe Biden’s administration approved the $8 billion Willow project on Alaska’s North Slope, which is expected to yield some 600 million barrels of oil over three decades. And last month, ExxonMobil announced a nearly $60 billion deal to acquire the oil producer Pioneer Natural Resources, which would allow it to more than double its production in the Permian Basin to 1.3 million barrels of oil and gas a day.Hundreds of fossil fuel extraction projects now planned or already in production constitute so-called carbon bombs that hold the potential to emit more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide over their lifetimes, one analysis found. If these projects go forward, the researchers concluded, their emissions would be twice the limit that would keep global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The United Nations Paris Agreement, ratified in 2015, seeks to hold the average global temperature increase to well below 2 C above preindustrial levels to minimize climate impacts, and advocates a 1.5 C increase as a major goal to avoid the most severe impacts.Fossil fuel companies’ production levels render such temperature goals all but impossible to achieve. A report from the United Nations Environment Program and other groups concluded that in 2030, oil and gas production would total more than twice the amount projected to increase global temperatures by 1.5 C. By 2040, production would be almost three times that amount. Another study found that 40 percent of developed fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground to give a 50-50 chance of staying below 1.5 C.A critical component of climate advocates’ plans to limit oil and gas production is leaving in the ground, or stranding, large percentages of existing fossil fuel reserves. In 2015, A University College London study found that limiting heating to 2 C would require stranding a third of oil reserves, almost half of gas reserves, and more than 80 percent of coal reserves. In a 2021 update, a similar analysis found that meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C target would mean leaving in the ground nearly 60 percent of oil and gas and 90 percent of coal reserves by 2050.However, these scenarios minimize or ignore the profound legal, political, and economic obstacles to such stranding.For one thing, because such strandings would damage corporations, company directors who approved them would be left open to personal lawsuits for breaching their corporate fiduciary duty. Such duty legally requires directors to act in the best interest of the company.Stranding resources could also be thwarted by legal claims from investors seeking compensation under international treaties. Countries offer such treaties to encourage foreign investment, and if they are violated, those investors can demand arbitration. An analysis by researchers at Boston University estimated that such arbitration could lead to government liabilities of up to $340 billion for oil and gas projects worldwide. Risks would be even greater if coal mining and fossil fuel infrastructure were included.One group found that aggressive energy policies to limit warming to 2 C would mean that $1.4 trillion in existing projects would lose their value. The researchers traced the risk of ownership of more than 40,000 oil and gas assets. Private investors would suffer the most through their pension funds and investments, the study found. Resource stranding would be a political disaster for any government, given the potential skyrocketing energy prices and enormous investor losses that would result. Witness how quickly and dramatically the Biden administration responded to the recent rise in gasoline prices by selling oil from the U.S. oil reserve to keep the price low. Finally, advocates of resource stranding ignore the fact that fossil fuels are inseparably fundamental to the functioning of the world economy, and deep reductions in carbon emissions under current policies is not a realistic possibility. Certainly, fossil fuel companies have resorted to underhanded tactics to undermine climate solutions. And certainly, they have made very large profits. However, to make significant progress toward those solutions, climate advocates must stop simplistically demonizing those companies and develop realistic strategies to overcome the legal and economic hurdles discussed here.
Marathon Petroleum Remains Committed to Plans for Alaskan LNG Imports - Marathon Petroleum Corp. continues to evaluate converting its Kenai LNG export terminal in Alaska to import the super-chilled fuel, a project the company said ultimately could be larger than originally planned to help meet local natural gas demand. FERC approved a Marathon subsidiary’s request in 2020 to convert the Kenai terminal, which hasn’t exported any LNG since 2015. The company said it was evaluating strategic options for the facility, including the plan authorized by federal regulators, along with a larger second phase import and regasification terminal. The facility is located near Marathon’s Kenai refinery on the Cook Inlet, about 60 miles southwest of Anchorage, which also would utilize imported natural gas.
Canada’s First Major LNG Feed Gas Pipeline Finishes Construction - TC Energy Corp. has finished building the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline after five years of construction, marking the completion of the first system in Canada that will deliver feed gas to an export plant. CGL hosted a final assembly event for the 402-mile pipeline near where it will link up with the LNG Canada terminal destination in Kitimat, about 392 miles north of Vancouver on the Pacific coast. The Golden Weld event as it was called brings “mechanical completion” to a close for CGL, the company said. All 402 miles “of pipe has been welded, coated, lowered into the trench, rigorously tested and backfilled.”
Montreal Preparing to Ban Most New Natural Gas Hookups in Next Two Years - Following the example of some U.S. municipalities, Montreal plans to begin imposing restrictions in October 2024 on new natural gas, propane and oil-burning hookups in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The local government rules would ban fossil fuel cooking and heating as of next October from new residential buildings up to three floors tall. Bans expand in April 2025 to new industry sites, which are not part of current gas networks. Exemptions would be granted for professional cooking, barbecues using fuel tanks, temporary outdoor power generators and construction site heaters.
Mexico LNG Projects in Focus as Asia Set to Dominate Demand Growth - Mexico is poised to play an increasingly prominent role in the global natural gas market, driven by internal demand and the LNG export projects planned for the country’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts. During a joint webinar on Thursday, experts from NGI and the London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSEG) described the market dynamics that are boosting Mexico’s profile as a consumer and potential exporter of the fuel. Mexico already is the largest natural gas market in Latin America and the eighth-largest in the world, with demand currently averaging around 8.5 Bcf/d, said NGI’s Christopher Lenton, senior editor for Mexico and Latin America. “To put that into perspective the United States is the biggest natural gas market in the world and Canada is the fifth,
Latin America Among Global E&P Markets Outpacing North America, Say Oilfield Services Execs - International markets including Latin America are now showing more robust upstream activity growth than North America, according to the top oilfield services firms. The management teams of SLB, Halliburton Co., Baker Hughes Co. and Weatherford International plc said exploration and production (E&P) projects outside of North America, particularly in the offshore segment, drove incremental revenues during the third quarter. Latin America generated $1.68 billion of revenue for SLB during 3Q, versus $1.51 billion in the same period last year and $1.62 billion in 2Q2023. The 4% sequential increase was “due to higher sales of production systems offshore Brazil, partially offset by lower revenue in Guyana,” management said. “Year-on-year, revenue grew 11%, led by higher sales of...
Mexico's Pemex refines less in September, produces more polluting fuel oil - (Reuters) - Mexican state energy company Pemex refined less crude oil in September than the previous month, with production of highly polluting fuel oil again surpassing gasoline output, data on its website showed. The data indicate the company is struggling to meet a promise to achieve energy "sovereignty" made by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose term in office ends in less than a year. Pemex refined 767,994 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in September, down 3.6% from August, and off 1.5% from the same month last year, the latest figures showed. Pemex produced 226,100 bpd of gasoline and 99,700 bpd of diesel, down 6.5% and 35% respectively from August. Total output of refined petroleum products was 826,500 bpd. The company churned out large amounts of fuel oil, a sludge-like product with high sulfur content. Production in September was 281,200 bpd, up 22.5% from the previous month. Mexico's six domestic refineries have struggled to efficiently process the heavy crude Pemex pumps. Fuel oil is mostly used for electricity generation in the country. Pemex and its partners pumped 1.59 million bpd of crude oil in September, down from 1.6 million bpd a month earlier, the data showed. The number for condensate, similar to a very light crude, was 286,000 bpd - up from 277,000 bpd.
Brazilian government is bullish on fracking - Fracking does not currently occur in Brazil, but that could change as the Mines and Energy Ministry is currently accepting bids under the so-called Transparent Well project. Despite the name of the project, however, the government has been less than straightforward in its approach to it. Lawmakers challenged the willingness to use an oil and gas extraction technique that is highly polluting, associated with premature births and high-risk pregnancies, and banned in two Brazilian states. Fracking — shorthand for hydraulic fracturing — is a method to extract natural gas and oil from deep rock formations known as shale. In this method, drilling operators force water, sand, and a mix of chemicals into horizontally drilled wells, causing the shale to crack and release oil or gas. and release oil or gas. A 2016 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that fracking “can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances.” The language used by the EPA is very mild, and a news release on a previous report was edited to downplay the risks of fracking to water. Others have blunter assessments. A recent story by the New York Times found that fracking wells in the U.S. have increased their water usage sevenfold since 2011, and are threatening U.S. aquifers. Separate studies by researchers from the University of Calgary and Johns Hopkins University — in rural Alberta and Pennsylvania, respectively — have linked proximity to fracking wells to adverse birth outcomes such as preterm birth, lower weight for gestational age, major congenital anomalies, and mortality. Pennsylvania environmental regulators found a likely correlation between fracking operations and a series of minor earthquakes. Fracking rose in popularity as high gas prices caused energy Fracking rose in popularity as high gas prices caused energy companies to shift to drilling for natural gas wells. The practice helped to turn the U.S. into the world’s largest oil producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia in 2018 and remaining in the top spot since.
QatarEnergy delivers 1,000th LNG cargo to UK's South Hook terminal - LNG producer QatarEnergy LNG, previously known as Qatargas, has delivered the 1,000th LNG shipment to the South Hook LNG terminal at Milford Haven in the United Kingdom. State-owned QatarEnergy said that its unit QatarEnergy LNG delivered the milestone shipment with the Q-Max LNG carrier Mozah, which already has another landmark achievement to its name: the 10,000th LNG cargo from Ras Laffan Port in 2006. QatarEnergy LNG charters the 2008-built 266,253-cbm LNG carrier from Qatar’s Nakilat. The 345 metes long LNG carrier is currently the world’s largest LNG vessel, along other Nakilat’s Q-Max vessels. With the arrival of the 1,000th vessel, South Hook terminal has received and processed almost 100 million tonnes of LNG, which is the equivalent of supplying natural gas to every household in the UK for almost 5 years, according to QatarEnergy. Located on the Pembrokeshire coast near Milford Haven in Wales, the South Hook LNG terminal became commercially operational in 2009 with the arrival of its commissioning cargo on board the Q-Flex LNG carrier Tembek. The terminal has the capacity to process up to 20 percent of the UK’s needs of natural gas. QatarEnergy is the majority shareholder with a 67.5 percent share, ExxonMobil has a 24.15 percent stake, and TotalEnergies has an 8.35 percent stake in the LNG terminal.
QatarEnergy finalizes HD Hyundai LNG carrier deal as talks with other yards continue - State-owned LNG giant QatarEnergy has finalized its previously announced deal for 17 LNG carriers with South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries as it continues to hold talks with other yards over the second phase of its giant shipbuilding program. According to a statement by South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), HD Hyundai and QatarEnergy officially signed the shipbuilding deal worth about $3.9 billion in Doha on October 25 as part of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to Qatar. MOTIE said this follows the framework agreement the two firms signed in September this year.Prior to this, QatarEnergy signed a deal with HHI in 2020 to reserve slots for its giant shipbuilding program.HHI’s parent HD KSOE also announced on Thursday that the shipbuilding contract was signed on October 25 and includes the construction of 17 174,000-cbm LNG carriers.This is the largest order ever received in the Korean shipbuilding industry based on a single contract, it said.KSOE said that HHI will deliver the 299 meters long and 46.4 meters wide vessels sequentially by September 2029.The contract marks the start of the second phase of QatarEnergy’s LNG ship acquisition program.Under the first phase, QatarEnergy contracted 60 LNG carriers at South Korea’s three shipbuilders HHI, Samsung Heavy, and Hanwha Ocean, and China’s Hudong-Zhonghua.The firm also signed multiple time charter parties with various shipowners during 2022 for the first phase of the program.This agreement brings the total number of confirmed new LNG vessels to be delivered to QatarEnergy and its affiliates to 77, with more to follow, QatarEnergy previously said.These “ultra-modern” vessels will support QatarEnergy’s expanding LNG production capacity from the North Field LNG expansion and Golden Pass LNG export projects as well as its long-term fleet replacement requirements, it said.
European Natural Gas Prices Gain as Egypt Says Pipeline Imports Stop – LNG Recap - Egypt’s government said Sunday that its natural gas imports have stopped as Israel intensified its fight against Hamas in Gaza. Natural gas prices in Asia and Europe stabilized Monday after declines last week. The market again braced for the possibility of a broader conflict in the Middle East. Egypt said Sunday that gas supplied from outside the country fell from 800 MMcf/d to zero, which exacerbated daily power outages that have been occurring there since mid-year. The country was forced to prolong the blackouts as hot weather, a lack of gas and stunted renewable output limited electricity supplies.
Russia Uses New Arctic LNG To Dodge Energy Sanctions -Vladimir Nekrasov, a prominent executive in Russia’s energy sector who criticized Putin, has had a tragic accident. These unavoidable twists of fate mean that up to 40 of the top managers in Russian energy have died since the war in Ukraine began. Coincidentally, they all commonly express skepticism towards Russia’s energy strategy, its funding streams, and its ability to fund the Kremlin’s war effort.Prior to exposés recently released by Le Mondeand Der Spiegel, it was assumed these deaths were Putin sweeping away the opposition and shaking down oligarchs for much-needed capital. While this remains true, the revelations that multiple French and German companies were cooperating with the Russian state in an “arctic pivot” for energy exports may have revealed another reason. Many of these Russian executives stood to lose significantly from Russia’s new energy strategy: pivot exports to the difficult-to-monitor Arctic to mitigate sanctions and may have resisted the transition. Following sanctions by the European Union on April 8th, 2022, targeting the energy sector, exports to Russia of products and technologies used in natural gas liquefaction were banned. Any technical, financial, or logistical assistance was also explicitly forbidden, with companies given a month to comply with the sanctions. Western energy corporations such as LindeLIN and Technip Energies minimized their financial losses in the mainstays of Russian gas production by pivoting to other areas of the Russian energy sector, before exiting the Russian market. Despite mostly complying and bringing a large number of components to Russia before the deadline, Western companies supplied machinery and other inputs for numerous arctic infrastructure projects after the sanctions came into force from August to October 2022. How were Western corporations able to support Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project despite the enforcement of sanctions? The French Economy Ministry, responsible for enforcing sanctions in France, explains that their application "depends on a case-by-case analysis." Sanctions have poor monitoring and enforcement, so while the law is enforced on a European level, there are disparities in implementation from one country to another. By stating that components sent to help Arctic LNG 2’s project weren’t important inputs or that the assistance was for infrastructure rather than energy exports, these energy corporations carefully concealed their actual involvement. Arctic LNG 2 is Russia’s largest gas export project yet. Located in northern Siberia’s Gyda peninsula, this location was previously inaccessible due to the Arctic ice – another example of climate change in action. It is meant to liquefy all natural gas from the many Siberian fields and plans to export 20 million tons of LNG per year – an equivalent of approximately 45 billion cubic meters a year. By building a new export terminal and directing the efforts of collaborators there, Russia is attempting to use the far less stringent sanctions regime relating to infrastructure, construction, and transportation to increase energy exports. The imports of dual-use technologies is often associated with military tech and civilian electronics, but it can be just as easily transposed into the energy sector. A litany of goods not exclusive to the energy sector can be directed in a way that either the energy industry can directly use, or the energy producers benefit from.
Spain and Belgium increased Russian LNG imports, study finds - Europe imported about the same amount of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) from January to September 2023 as it did during the same period last year — but some countries experienced notable increases. Spain and Belgium increased imports of LNG from Russia by 50 percent during this period, year-on-year, while France saw Russian LNG imports rise by 40 percent, a report revealed on Tuesday (31 October). Approximately 27 percent of Spain's imported LNG for this period came from Russia, and Belgium relied even more heavily on Russia for 37 percent of its LNG. France, for its part, had 15 percent of its LNG coming from Russia. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU vowed to cut reliance on Russian fossil-fuels but quickly bumped up against concerns it was substituting one form of pollution for another. New data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis' (IEEFA) LNG tracker shows that European countries are still expanding LNG infrastructure, even as LNG and gas demand are expected to dwindle. Europe has increased its LNG capacity, with six new LNG terminals coming into operation since the beginning of 2022. And plans for new regasification LNG terminals are set to bring Europe's LNG capacity to 406bn cubic meters (bcm). However, LNG demand will not exceed 150bcm in 2030, revealing a potential surplus, according to the institute's forecasts. "The decline in gas demand is challenging the narrative that Europe needs more LNG infrastructure to reach its energy security goals. The data is showing that we don't," said Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an energy analyst from the IEEFA. "Countries in Europe risk trading a reliance on Russian pipelines for a redundant LNG system that further exposes the continent to volatile prices," she also said. Meanwhile, the current proposed EU gas buildout of LNG infrastructure by 2030 is estimated to cost approximately €22.1bn, according to Global Energy Monitor. About €4.2bn is associated with terminals or pipelines already under construction.
Swedish authorities battle to stabilise stricken ferry leaking oil into Baltic Sea -A ferry that ran aground off south-eastern Sweden had “extensive damage” and was leaking oil into the Baltic Sea, a spokesman for the Swedish coast guard said.On 22 October the Marco Polo was running between two Swedish ports – Trelleborg and Karlshamn – when it ran aground near Horvik and started leaking. It continued under its own power before grounding a second time.The 75 people onboard, both passengers and crew, were evacuated. The ferry, operated by TT-Line of Germany, took on water but was not at risk of sinking. The groundings released a slick of fuel that reached the shores near Solvesborg, 110km (68 miles) north-east of Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city. Swedish media carried photos of birds partly covered in oil. Swedish prosecutors handed down fines to the captain and an officer who was in charge at the time of the grounding, saying they acted recklessly by relying on a faulty GPS.Initially the plan was to pump out the remaining oil from the ferry. That plan was thwarted on Sunday when the ferry slipped off its grounding because of severe weather, the Swedish coast guard and the TT-Line company said. It drifted further out, got stuck for a third time and leaked more oil.The latest movement “did not damage the previously unbreached oil tanks”, TT-Line said. “We are aware of the impact the incident has caused and we are taking the case very seriously.” Swedish authorities – including the civil protection agency – sent planes, drones, ships and people to the site. Two tugboats were sent to stabilise the ferry. On Monday, authorities said they were increasing the resources allocated, with several ships and more staff, after further oil spills were discovered.About 25 cubic metres of oil and oil waste had been removed by Monday. Authorities said the spill stretched over 5km (three miles) out to sea.
Spot LNG shipping rates rise for first time in five weeks, Spark says - Spot charter rates for the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier fleet increased this week for the first time in five weeks, exhibiting a 19 percent week-on-week increase in the Atlantic, according to Spark Commodities.Last week, the Atlantic rate fell to $132,500 per day, while the Pacific rate decreased to $129,500 per day.“The Spark30S Atlantic increased by $25,000 to $157,250 per day, and the Spark25S Pacific increased by $13,250 to $142,750 per day,” Qasim Afghan, Spark’s commercial analyst told LNG Prime on Friday.As per European LNG pricing, the SparkNWE DES LNG front month declined from the last week.Last week, the NWE DES LNG for November was assessed at at $14.975 per MMBtu, a $0.565 discount to the TTF price.“The SparkNWE DES LNG price for November deliveries fell $0.150 week-on-week to $14.824/MMBtu, partially driven by an increased discount to the TTF which widened by $0.31 to $0.875/MMBtu,” Afghan said. The TTF price for November settled at $15.718/MMBtu on Thursday.Platts assessed JKM, the price for LNG cargoes delivered to Northeast Asia, for December at $17.550/MMBtu on Thursday.The average for November was $14.475/MMBtu, it said.
Chevron: Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG workers back new labor deals - Chevron’s workers at the Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG export terminals in Western Australia have voted in favor of new labor agreements. The workers voted during the weekend on all three enterprise agreements, including for the Wheatstone and Gorgon downstream facilities and the Wheatstone offshore platform. “Chevron Australia is pleased to confirm the proposed enterprise agreements for frontline field operations employees at our Gorgon and Wheatstone gas facilities have been supported by the majority of employees in a vote,” a Chevron spokesperson told LNG Prime on Monday. Moreover, the spokesperson said that the agreements “achieve sustainable, market competitive outcomes that are in the interests of our employees and the company.” “Following the vote, we will proceed to have the agreements approved by the Fair Work Commission,” the spokesperson said. Prior to these votes, Chevron’s workers agreed on October 18 to suspend industrial action planned for October 19. The Offshore Alliance, which includes the Maritime Union of Australia and Australian Workers’ Union, said that its members on the Chevron facilities voted 94 percent in support of an in-principle agreement to suspend protected industrial action. The Gorgon LNG plant on Barrow Island has a production capacity of some 15.5 mtpa while. The Wheatstone LNG plant near Onslow has a capacity of about 8.9 mtpa.
Surprise! CSIRO gas funded research lowballs emissions from Darwin's Middle Arm petro-port and Beetaloo fracking - Michael West -The Government’s science agency – the CSIRO – has been found to severely underestimate the CO2 emissions from the proposed petrochemicals port in Darwin, the so called Middle Arm Sustainable Development Project.Callum Foote reports.In February this year, government science agency CSIRO’s Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA), produced a report on the potential emissions from the Beetaloo Basin project and associated infrastructure.The Federal and Northern Territory governments have used the report to justify the gas fracking in the Beetaloo Basin south of Darwin and the associated $1.5 billion Middle Arm LNG precinct in Darwin Harbour which is intended to use the Beetaloo gas.However, an independent analysis of the CSIRO’s Beetaloo Basin report has found that the government science agency drastically underestimated total emissions.The report found that the Beetaloo project would not increase Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions when accounting for offsets.This is an important finding for proponents of the project, as both the federal and NT governments have agreed to implement the recommendations of the 2018 Pepper Inquiry into fracking in the NT. A key recommendation states that there should be no net increase in the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions emitted in Australia from onshore shale gas produced in the NT.However, the new analysis has found that the Beetaloo fracking project alone would produce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to up to 11% of Australia’s total 2021 emissions, and would generate more emissions than the 2030 reduction goal under the new Safeguard Mechanism regulations. The Climate Analytics analyst and report author Thomas Houlie said: “Everywhere we looked, we found the GISERA report had significantly underestimated emissions factors, from the emissions intensity of fracked gas, to methane loss and leakage, LNG production, the availability of offsets and the capture rate for carbon capture: all of these add up to a rosy picture that simply doesn’t reflect reality.The producer of the report GISERA is actually an alliance agreement between the four biggest unconventional gas companies in Australia (Australia Pacific LNG, Origin Energy, QGC, and Santos) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This means the CSIRO has been subject to claims of conflicts of interest, a government scientific organisation part funded by the gas lobby. Gas industry executives sit on all the committees overseeing GISERA research projects. The National Research Management Committee (NRMC) which oversees finance and research of all the regional committees, has five gas industry executives amongst its eight members. Australia Institute expert Mark Ogge has previously called out the apparent conflict of interest with having a gas lobby funded research wing of the CSIRO producing research which the government relies upon for policy outcomes. Ogge said that “there is a substantial body of literature that finds research outcomes are heavily influenced by the corporate funding.”
Deadly explosion off Nigeria points to threat posed by aging oil ships around the world (AP) — It was the dead of night when the ship caught fire, Patrick Aganyebi remembers, but the flames made it seem as bright as day. As the flames barreled toward him, he prepared to jump nearly 100 feet (30 meters) into the sea. Five workers were killed and two others presumed dead in the blast on the Trinity Spirit, a rusting converted oil tanker anchored 15 miles (24 km) off the coast of Nigeria that pulled crude oil from the ocean floor. It was by the grace of God, Aganyebi said, that he and two fellow crewmen escaped, rescued by a pair of fishermen as the burning vessel sank along with 40,000 barrels of oil. The Trinity Spirit’s explosion in February of last year stands among the deadliest tragedies on an oil ship or platform in recent years. The Associated Press’ review of court documents, ship databases, and interviews with crew members reveals that the 46-year-old ship was in a state of near-total disrepair, and the systems meant to ensure its safe and lawful operation — annual inspections, a flag registry, insurance — had gradually fallen away. The Trinity Spirit fits a pattern of old tankers put to work storing and extracting oil even while on the brink of mechanical breakdowns. At least eight have been shut down after a fire, a major safety hazard, or the death of a worker in the last decade, according to an AP review. More than 30 are older than the Trinity Spirit and still storing oil around the world. Jan-Erik Vinnem, who has spent his career studying the risks of offshore oil production, said he’s sometimes shocked when he sees pictures of oil ships in Africa. “I call them ‘floating bombs,’” he said. The Trinity Spirit was part of a class of vessels that extracts oil offshore and stores it at sea. They are known as floating production storage and offloading units — FPSOs — or as FSOs, floating storage and offloading units, when used only for storage. Since the 1970s, they’ve become increasingly popular for developing oil in deep waters and in places where no pipelines exist. According to the environmental group SkyTruth, there are some 240 in operation today. FPSOs are unlike most ships for one key reason: They stay in place. Once attached to the ocean floor, they can linger at the same oil field for years or even decades. They may be surveyed by in-country regulators or hired inspectors, but they operate outside the normal flow of shipping traffic and the added safety and legal inspections that take place in port. “If a vessel is sitting in a country’s domestic waters and is not going around trading … then you’re not going to have that same level of oversight,” said Meghan Mathieson, strategy director at the Canadian-based Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping. More than half the current fleet of FPSOs are recycled oil tankers, according to Oslo-based Rystad Energy, which keeps data on the ships. Senior analyst Edvard Christoffersen said that without a major repair, most oil ships have hulls built to last about 25 years. But some FPSOs are used far longer, sometimes to dangerous effect.
Oil prices slip even as Middle East tensions spike, as investors eye Fed meeting - - Oil prices dipped even after Israel sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip, raising tensions in the Middle East, as investors closely monitor the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting later this week. Global benchmark Brent was down 2.8% at $87.89 per barrel. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures last declined 3.5% to $82.57 per barrel.“I think the market had priced in the incursion on Friday and tonight is more ‘sell the fact,’” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told CNBC via email. He said the ground operations were “limited so far” and noted other macroeconomic concerns.The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday, after the U.S. economy grew faster than expected at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter.“Recent U.S. economic data does not seem to provide much room for the Fed to back away from its high-for-longer rate stance, while China’s upcoming PMI read may still reveal downside risks to economic conditions,” said IG’s Market Strategist Yeap Jun Rong. He pointed out that both seem to cast some near-term reservations for oil prices to follow through with recent gains.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a Saturday press conference that Israel has entered its second phase of the war, in what he expects will be “long and difficult” as the country expands its ground operations in the strip.Oil prices surged late Friday, with Brent jumping above $90 per barrel as Israel said its troops were ‘increasing the ground operation’ in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate the militant group Hamas.“While a major oil supply disruption is not our base case, the oil market last week became a little too complacent about the likelihood of a major Israeli ground incursion in Gaza, and the risk of a wider regional war,” McNally continued.
U.S. Eyes Tighter Sanctions On Iran’s Oil And Gas Exports-- As the oil market grapples with the current and potential effects of the Gaza war, a new significant concern has emerged. U.S. sources indicate that the Biden Administration might soon impose stricter sanctions on Iran. Such a move would represent a marked shift from Washington’s recent rapprochement with Tehran. Over the past few months, an increasing number of commentators in Washington have criticized the Biden Administration’s decision to release $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets as part of a prisoner exchange with the Khamenei regime. While previous calls for action have yielded little response, events like the Hamas actions on October 7, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and the widespread belief that Iran and its allies are fuelling instability in the Middle East have reinvigorated those advocating for sanctions on Iran. Given the evidence suggesting that senior officers of the IRGC back attacks by Iranian proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon against U.S. military personnel and civilians, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify releasing funds to Iran. Moreover, the unwavering support shown by Iran’s religious leader Khamenei and President Raisi for Hamas and threats of direct engagement if the conflict extends to Lebanon is compelling Washington to reassess its stance. Analysts expect that new sanctions could be slapped on Iran very soon, focusing on the country’s largely illegal oil and gas exports. The imposition of renewed or even more stringent sanctions on Iran’s hydrocarbon sectors and exports would have significant repercussions. The current supply-demand balance is tight, and both OPEC and other experts anticipate further demand growth. If all other factors remain constant, this would result in price surges, potentially pushing prices well above the $100-110 per barrel mark. Re-establishing a strict sanctions regime, which had been eased after Biden’s election, appears more feasible now than ever. A key reason for the lack of widespread panic is OPEC+’s decision to cut several million barrels of daily production. As a result, the global spare production capacity stands at around 5 million barrels, primarily held by countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the UAE. Rolling back the OPEC+ production cuts could benefit importers and stabilize oil prices in the desired range, as preferred by OPEC’s most influential member, Saudi Arabia. A renewed sanctions framework would significantly burden Iran’s fundamentalist regime by depriving it of its primary revenue source: hydrocarbon sales. Implementing strict sanctions globally would likely pressure Iran to meet other demands, particularly in refraining from intervening in the Israel-Hamas and Hezbollah conflict. Some might argue that placing financial constraints on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) could be a severe setback and shouldn’t be underestimated. Simultaneously, new sanctions might disrupt or even sever financial ties between Iran and its regional proxies, a move that many Arab nations would likely welcome.
How Houthi Attacks Affect Both the Israel-Hamas Conflict and Yemen’s Own Civil War – and Could Put Pressure on US, Saudi Arabia - Yemen’s Houthi movement launched missiles and drones at Israel on Oct. 31, 2023 – provoking fears of a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict.< With the militia – which controls part of the Arabian Peninsula state – vowing further attacks, Israel countered by sending missile boats to the Red Sea. They join U.S. warships already deployed in the area.The Conversation U.S. turned to Mahad Darar, a Yemeni politics expert at Colorado State University, to explain what is behind the Houthis’ involvement in the war – and how it could risk not only widening the conflict but reigniting hostilities in Yemen itself. The Houthi group, also known as Ansar Allah, is an armed militia of the Zaydi Shia sect in Yemen. They ousted Yemen’s transitional government led by Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in a 2014 coup and have since been engaged in a bloody civil war with the ousted administration, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. As such, the attack on Israel can be seen as showcasing both the Houthis’ – and Iran’s – military capabilities to both local and regional audiences. Indeed, some analysts argue that the reason Tehran supplied the Houthis with long-range missiles was so it could pose a threat to both Israel and also Tehran’s rival in the region: Saudi Arabia. However, although it may seem that the Houthis are acting as an Iranian proxy, the main reason the militia launched the attack could be to gain domestic support. Houthi leadership may be trying to present the group as the dominant force in Yemen willing to challenge Israel – a country that is generally unpopular in the Arab world. This approach helps the Houthis outmaneuver local rivals and unite the Yemeni public behind the cause of Palestinian liberation. In particular, the Houthis will want to present a different face to the Arab world than Saudi Arabia, which had been looking to normalize ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia, it should be added, is the main backer of the internationally recognized Yemeni government – one of the Houthis’ main opponents in the civil war. Some analysts have suggested that an attack by the Houthis heightens the chances of overwhelming Israel’s defense systems, if it forms part of a coordinated effort involving Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.But this idea falls short for two reasons:First, the Houthis likely have fewer ballistic missiles than Hezbollah and Hamas and realistically stand li ttle chance of inflicting much damage on Israel. Moreover, they will be mindful of keeping these missiles for their own use in the ongoing civil war in Yemen – which poses a more immediate threat to the group than Israel does. Second, the imprecision of the Houthi missiles means that any attack also poses a risk to countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, as these projectiles could land in their territories and cause damage. In fact, drones reportedly launched by the Houthis have already caused explosions after erroneously crashing in Egypt. Could the Attack Be Iran’s Bidding?Houthi actions primarily serve their own interests rather than those of Iran. And unlike Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria – which have recently attacked U.S. troops – the Houthis have not targeted U.S. forces in the region. If the Houthis were truly in the same basket as other Iranian proxies, I believe they would have targeted the nearest U.S. stationed base, which is Djibouti. But Houthi leadership will be mindful that such an attack would not only be unpopular among the Yemeni population but also would potentially come at a high cost to themselves. Unlike Hezbollah and Hamas, which are focused on resisting Israeli occupation, the Houthis are primarily concerned with local issues within Yemen. That said, the Houthis haven’t shied away from appearing aligned with Iran of late, mainly because they rely heavily on Iranian supplies of weapons. Negotiations between Houthis, Saudis and the Saudi-led coalition backing the Yemeni government forces are at a delicate point. Recently, it was reported that the Houthis killed four Saudi soldiers just days after Saudi Arabia shot down a missilefrom the Houthis that was headed for Israel. In the latest Houthi attack, the missiles passed through Saudi territory uninterrupted before being shot down by Israel. It is unclear whether this is an indication that the Saudis heeded the Houthis’ warning, which is potentially why they didn’t shoot down the latest missiles. To know more about the true state of Saudi-Houthi negotiations, there needs to be greater evidence, such as increased clashes between the Saudis and Houthis, or even a direct attack by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia. But if Houthi missile attacks escalate in the coming days, it could put Saudi Arabia in a difficult spot. At that point, the Saudis would face a difficult choice. They could allow the Houthis’ missiles to continue passing through their land or they could try to shoot them down. But that would risk jeopardizing diplomatic efforts with both the Houthis and Iran. And that, I feel, seems very unlikely.
Twenty-Six Journalists Killed in Gaza Since October 7 - At least 26 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Israel unleashed its bombing campaign on the besieged enclave in response to the October 7 Hamas attack, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Monday.The majority of the Palestinian journalists were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, with three reported being shot dead on October 7. The CPJ said four Israeli journalists were killed in the Hamas attack. A Reuters journalist was killed by Israeli shelling in Lebanon on October 13.For comparison, the CPJ has reported that 15 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022.The staggering journalist death toll in Gaza reflects the massive civilian casualties in Israeli airstrikes. Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 8,306 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli onslaught, including 3,457 children.President Biden has accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll, but Gaza’s Health Ministry is considered reliable, and the numbers reflect the massive number of bombs Israel has dropped on the enclave. UN officials told The Wall Street Journal that they believe the death toll is likely much higher since it doesn’t include people still under the rubble.
Israel Following US Advice in Its Gaza Ground Operation -Israel’s current ground operation in Gaza is in line with the advice the US has been giving, a US official told The Times of Israel.The official said Israel had launched a “limited” ground incursion, which is what the US recommended to avoid harming hostages, as opposed to a full-scale invasion. Hamas has claimed 50 hostages have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, but the number hasn’t been confirmed.The US official said Israel did not need pressure from the US to launch a limited incursion. The New York Times reported that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin advised a limited ground incursion in talks with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. The Pentagon has also dispatched a three-star Marine Corps general and other officers to serve as military advisors, demonstrating how deeply involved the US is with the war planning. When Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Friday, the enclave’s phone and internet services were cut, blacking out any media coverage on the ground and making rescue operations significantly more difficult. Services were restored on Sunday morning after 34 hours.A US official told The Wall Street Journal that the US had convinced Israel to restore Gaza’s phone and internet service after shutting it down so the UN and aid groups could communicate with their staff inside the enclave.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israel’s war in Gaza had entered a “second stage” and told Israelis to prepare for a “long and hard” offensive. Hamas’ armed wing, the al-Qassams Brigade,said Sunday that its forces were engaged in “heavy fighting with the invading occupation forces in northwest Gaza.”While Israel’s ground incursion might be more limited than initially planned, its airstrikes have continued to pound Gaza relentlessly. According to Al Jazeera, Gaza residents described the weekend bombardment as the most intense yet. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported the death toll in the enclave since Israel unleashed its bombing campaign has surpassed 8,000,including over 3,000 children.
Israel launches expanded Gaza ground operation — but won’t use the I-word - It increasingly looks like Israel has launched its much-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza — but officials won’t use the I-word to describe the campaign. Speaking to his nation Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s fight against Hamas had entered “the second stage of the war” following a decision by the war cabinet to expand ground operations in Gaza. Standing alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and unity government partner Benny Gantz, Netanyahu acknowledged that what comes next will be a long, hard-fought battle. “This is our second independence war. We’re going to save our country,” he said. But Daniel Hagari, a military spokesperson, later framed the operation more modestly to reporters, saying the Israel Defense Forces would be “gradually increasing its ground activity in the Gaza Strip and the scale of its forces.” The careful wording belies reports of heavy fighting by relatively small IDF units who have pushed into Gaza, supported by tanks, helicopters and air strikes. While intense, the runs are not the massive invasion the IDF has positioned itself to launch and indicate the war might be fought in smaller, targeted engagements rather than a massive push through the densely populated enclave. Israeli officials over the last 24 hours signaled that the incursion into northern Gaza will be the first step in a multi-part operation to dismantle Hamas’ military capabilities. “The campaign will continue until further notice,” Gallant said.
UN Says Israeli Strikes on Jabalia Refugee Camp Could 'Amount to War Crimes' - The UN’s Human Rights Office said Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp could be a war crime due to the high number of civilian casualties.“Given the high number of civilian casualties & the scale of destruction following Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp, we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes,” the office wrote on X.Israel struck Jabalia for the second time within two days on Wednesday. The Israeli military said the strikes that hit the densely populated campkilled Muhammad A’sar, the head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit, but the Israeli claim is not confirmed.Gaza’s Health Ministry said scores of people were killed and wounded in the Wednesday airstrikes, but the death toll is not clear. A day earlier, Israeli warplanes hammered Jabalia, killing at least 50 people.Another phone and internet outage in Gaza on Wednesday made it difficult for media outlets to get a gauge of the death toll in the second Israeli attack on Jabalia.According to The New York Times, the second strike took place in the Falluja neighborhood of Jabaliya, about half a mile south of where Tuesday’s attack took place. The paper verified video footage of rescue workers and residents digging through the rubble and carrying what appears to be injured and dead people, including children.After the Tuesday attack, an Israeli military spokesman acknowledged that Jabalia was full of innocent civilians, including women and children. “This is the tragedy of war … we’ve been saying for days, move south,” the spokesman said.
'A Clear-Cut War Crime': Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp - The Israeli military bombed Gaza's largest refugee camp for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as humanitarian groups and lawmakers called the series of attacks a blatant war crime and slammed the U.S. government for enabling such atrocities. Wednesday's attack reportedly killed and wounded "a number of" people at the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, where hundreds were killed or injured roughly 24 hours earlier in bombings by the Israeli military. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Tuesday's strikes were aimed at a "tunnel complex" where a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was purportedly hiding. The IDF said the airstrikes killed Biari but denied intentionally bombing the camp's buildings, more than a dozen of which were leveled in the attack."I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell," said one eyewitness. "There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world."A Doctors Without Borders nurse in Gaza said that after Tuesday's strikes, "young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns.""They came without their families," the nurse added. "Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients." Asked about the civilians who were killed in the Tuesday strikes, an IDF spokesperson toldCNN that "this is the tragedy of war" and that the Israeli military instructed people in the area to "move south." Hamas denied the claim that one of its commanders was in the area targeted by the Israeli military.Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, argued Tuesday that Israel's assault on Gaza's largest refugee camp "is a clear-cut war crime.""It shows wanton disregard for the legal obligation to minimize civilian harm in targeting military objectives. It is the latest of many such attacks by the IDF," Konyndyk wrote. "This in turn underscores that Netanyahu is making a mockery of Biden's repeated pleas to follow the laws of war—without any acknowledgment of that reality by the U.S. This leaves a cease-fire as the only viable path to civilian protection."U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is leading a congressional resolutioncalling for a cease-fire in Gaza, also denounced the refugee camp bombing as a war crime and said that "this unspeakable violence must end."
Some Foreign Nationals, Severely Wounded Palestinians Allowed to Leave Gaza -After weeks of enduring a vicious bombing campaign, some dual nationals and severely wounded Palestinians were allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.An Egyptian official told CNN that 361 foreign passport holders and 81 severely wounded Palestinians entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday. The official said among the foreign nationals are citizens of Austria, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Italy, and Japan.The State Department has estimated that 400 American citizens are trapped in Gaza, but it’s not clear how many got out on Wednesday. According toAP, the White House only expected a “handful” of Americans to be among the people who got out. According to CNN, two American physicians entered Egypt on Wednesday.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his State Department previously said the only thing preventing Americans from leaving Gaza was Hamas, but sources told CNN that a diplomatic agreement was worked out between Israel, Egypt, and Hamas to allow people to cross the border.According to messages reviewed by ABC News, US officials had told an American citizen stuck in Gaza that there was more than one issue preventing them from leaving despite Blinken’s claim. “There’s more than one sticking point. We need Egypt, Israel, and the DFA (De Facto Authorities) to all agree,”
Leaked Israeli Intelligence Ministry Document Proposes Complete Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza - A leaked document drafted by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry proposes the ethnic cleansing of the approximately 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip as a potential solution to Israel’s war against Hamas.The document, dated October 13, was published by the Hebrew language website Sicha Mekomit, and the Israeli government has confirmed its authenticity. According to The Times of Israel, Israeli government officials are downplaying the document, saying it only represents “initial thoughts” and that they are currently focused on the war effort.The proposed plan would involve pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. They would first live in tent cities until permanent structures are built. The plan also includes a several-kilometer-wide “sterile” buffer zone inside Egypt so the Palestinians could not live on the border.The document proposes two other potential plans, including handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority once Hamas is defeated. Another proposal would involve Israel propping up a new Arab regime in Gaza. But the document says these two proposals would not sufficiently deter future attacks and that the preferred option is cleansing Gaza of Palestinians.The writers of the document said allowing the PA to administer Gaza is the “most dangerous alternative” of the three options because it could lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.While Israeli government officials are downplaying the document and its existence does not mean it’s a policy Israel will implement, some parts of the proposal are being carried out. The document says the first phase of the plan would be to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, which Israel has ordered, and to focus airstrikes on the north before a ground invasion.The biggest impediment to Israel cleansing Gaza of Palestinians is opposition from Egypt and Arab and international pressure. The document says that part of the plan is for the US to exert “pressure on Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the [UAE] to contribute to the initiative either in resources or in accepting displaced persons.”
Israeli Officials' Plans to Ethnically Cleanse, Recolonize Gaza Stoke 'Second Nakba' Fears - The revelation in recent days of two separate Israeli plans for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza has stoked fresh fears of ethnic cleansing in the besieged strip, while Jewish settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank are vowing to slaughter Palestinians there if they don't flee to Jordan.As Israeli forces continue to pulverize Gaza with air and artillery strikes ahead of an expected major ground invasion—killing more than 7,300 Palestinians, wounding nearly 19,000 others, and displacing over 1.4 million residents—some Israeli leaders are formulating plans for the recolonization of Gaza.The Israeli business daily Calcalistfirst reported a plan by Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel to forcibly expel Gazans into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza, after the war. Calcalist viewed a document bearing the Intelligence Ministry's logo that was obtained by the Settlement Headquarters movement, which seeks to recolonize Gaza 18 years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the coastal strip.Gamliel envisions a course of action "that will yield positive and long-term strategic results" and involves the forced transfer of all Gazans into Egypt, a removal that would be carried out in three stages. First, tent cities would be built in the Sinai southwest of Gaza. This would be followed by the creation of a "humanitarian corridor" to aid evacuees. Finally, cities would be built in northern Sinai to permanently house Gazan refugees.The plan also calls for the creation of a "sterile zone" several kilometers wide to prevent Palestinians from returning to Gaza, as well as efforts to persuade countries to act as "absorption baskets" for displaced Gazans. European countries such as Spain and Greece, North African nations, and Canada are all mentioned as possible resettlement destinations.Referring to previous schemes to expel Palestinians from Gaza—most notably the mid-2000s Eiland Plan—the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights asserted Thursday that "Israel's plan to ethnically cleanse 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza is not a result of its current genocidal war. It is by design and must be stopped!"
Egypt Is Playing an Extremely High-Stakes Game in Gaza That Could End in Genocide --The situation is grim since there aren’t any reasons to expect Israel to voluntarily stop its ground operation, nor any indications as of yet that the Arab states are seriously considering another oil embargo against the West. The risk of a genocide in Gaza is therefore growing by the day, and with Egypt threatening to go to war if these refugees are pushed across its border and Israel likely abandoning this pressure campaign in response, over two million people face a very dire fate.Egyptian Prime Minister Madbouly said earlier this week that his country was ready to “sacrifice millions of lives” in defense of its territory and to prevent regional conflicts from being resolved at its expense. This ominous remark was interpreted as signaling that Egypt is prepared to go to war as a last resort to stop a flood of Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Before proceeding, readers should review this analysis about “Egypt’s Dilemma: Facilitate Ethnic Cleansing Or Allow Possible Genocide” for background.In brief, Egypt can either open the floodgates and facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza or keep its borders closed and therefore tacitly allow their possible genocide by Israel. The first option has obvious humanitarian arguments in its favor, while the counterarguments are that “Weapons of Mass Migration” could destabilize Egypt and Israel might never let those refugees return once they’re gone. As for the second option, the arguments and counterarguments are reversed, but the logic stands.Judging by Madbouly’s latest remark, Egypt has decided to play an extremely high-stakes game in Gaza after publicly signaling a desire to go to war as a last resort to stop a flood of Palestinian refugees, but this could end in genocide in the worst-case scenario that it fails to get Israel to stop its bombings. About that, while Russia supports Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorist attacks like Hamas’ infamous one in early October, it’s against the self-professed Jewish State’s collective punishment of the Palestinians. At the same time, Egypt is also the most populous Arab state too and tried leading this group of countries during the middle of the Old Cold War, plus many of its people sympathize with their co-religionists in Palestine. These factors worsen the dilemma that it’s been plunged into by the latest conflict since it would prefer to keep those refugees out of its borders, especially since some might be Hamas sleeper cells, but it’s also under some pressure to immediately relieve their suffering as well. President Sisi seemingly chose to prioritize Egypt’s national security and political interests over the Palestinians’ humanitarian ones, which explains why his Prime Minister just said what he did. It also deserves mentioning that Israel just confirmed the existence of a scandalous so-called “concept paper” that was previously reported on by The Grayzone. The influential think tank behind it proposed “resettling” all the Gazans in Egypt, or in other words, ethnically cleansing them. According to Israeli website Ynet, Israel proposed bailing Egypt out of its international debts in exchange for that country allowing Palestinian refugees to flood into the country. The abovementioned “concept paper” coupled with this latest Israeli report add context to Madbouly’s remark. They enable observers to reframe them as an indirect public response to Tel Aviv’s efforts to resolve the Palestinian conflict at Egypt’s expense, which could entail considerable national security and political costs as explained. With these factors in mind, particularly Egypt’s willingness to go to war to prevent a flood of Palestinian refugees, Israel will probably stop pressuring its neighbor to accept them since it’s not worth ruining ties with the largest Arab state. The self-professed Jewish State’s perception managers might then try to divide blame for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by their government’s collective punishment of its people by claiming that it’s partially Cairo’s fault for not opening its border to save them. If Israel’s ground operation continues as planned, then there’s a credible risk of genocide, which could only realistically be averted in the scenario that the Arab states agree on another oil embargo. This proposal was elaborated on here, but can be summarized as punishing Israel’s Western patrons with the intent of getting that bloc to coerce Tel Aviv into stopping its ground operation. It might still not succeed, and there might not be enough Arab unity to even try, but it’s the only realistic option available.Israel has proven itself impervious to global opinion so nobody should hope that any more pro-Palestinian protests will finally succeed in bringing an end to its ground operation. Instead, the case can be made that these demonstrations might have a better chance of getting the Arab states to seriously discuss another oil embargo or pressure Egypt to finally open its border in exchange for refugee aid. Once again, the primary dilemma is over facilitating ethnic cleansing or allowing genocide.
What Gives Israel the Right to Annihilate Gaza? - It has been three weeks since the Israeli army launched a full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip, popularly termed a war between Israel and Hamas. Following an assault by the military wing of Hamas on Israeli soldiers and civilians, the Israeli government declared its intention to eliminate the group. In its efforts to do so, Israel has pummelled the Palestinian population in Gaza with airstrikes. It has cut civilians’ access to water, food and power. And it has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops for a ground invasion, which has now begun. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the United Nations, over 8000 Palestinians have already been killed, some 40% of whom were children, and more than half of Gaza’s residents are now displaced. It has also disappeared thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, doubling the number of Palestinian prisoners in just two weeks. They are now believed to be held in inhumane detention conditions. And, in the West Bank, it has violently invaded Palestinian towns and refugee camps, killing more than 100 people. Meanwhile, another campaign is raging on the airwaves and across social media. Waged by both volunteers and professional pundits, Tiktok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook are all overflowing with content aimed at influencing public opinion on the crisis. Some posts make light of Palestinian death with memefied, casual cruelty. Others sex up the Israeli Defence Forces. Still others cheerlead genocide.Talking heads promising wisdom, hard truths or explanations for the conflict from across the political spectrum are also everywhere. As researchers both specialising on Palestine, we’ve taken a keen interest in what they’ve been saying. And on the side of Israel’s apologists, we’ve seen two main narratives at work. Both are deeply flawed. The first ignores all context to portray Israel as the undeniable victim of a brutish neighbour. The second draws selectively on context to portray Hamas and Israel as more or less equal adversaries tragically unable to come to an accord. This narrative, designed to appeal to moderates and confound pro-Palestinian messaging, argues that everyone has blood on their hands in this endless cycle of violence – meaning no easy condemnation of Israel is possible. While the glaring narrow-mindedness of the first narrative should be self-evident in the face of Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza, many American, British and European officials and pundits have openly embraced it. Prominent Christian evangelical media figures have also voiced their support, calling for unwavering solidarity with Israel. Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, put the 7 October attack in a vacuum at the recent peace summit in Cairo: “The reason for all the pain in the past weeks – the pain that has brought us here today – has a name. It was Hamas that brought horrible terror to Israel on 7 October and perpetrated abominable crimes.” Joe Biden, the US president, was equally one-sided in his speech in Tel Aviv: Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world. There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period. … The US has since voted against a UN security council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to allow the delivery of life-saving aid to Gaza. As US Secretary of State Blinken put it, “We’re not in the business of second-guessing what [Israel] are doing.” This guiding thought has led some Western politicians to explicitly endorse Israel’s crimes against humanity. Keir Starmer, the head of the opposition in the UK, unequivocally endorsed collective punishment for the Palestinian people when he said that Israel had the right to cut off food, water and power from 2.4 million people in response to Hamas’ attack. This blatantly disregards Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which binds Israel to certain obligations under the law of occupation, notably ensuring that the population of Gaza has access to food, medicines, and other essential goods. Yet, for Starmer, a trained human right lawyer, and many others like him, it appears that threatening mass starvation and dehydration is deemed a valid tool of self-defense for Israel.
Bolivia cuts diplomatic ties with Israel over Hamas war -The Bolivian government announced Tuesday that it would be cutting diplomatic ties with Israel over the country’s war with Hamas, making it the first country to sever ties with Israel since the start of its conflict.María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration, announced the decision at a press conference.“We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” she said.The decision represents a “condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and its threat to international peace and security,” Freddy Mamani, the country’s deputy foreign minister, said.Mamani also said they are calling for Israel to end its blockade preventing the entry of food, water and other “essential elements for life,” Reuters reported.Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales called for the country to sever ties with Israel because of the “horrific situation” Palestinian people are facing. In an Oct. 20 post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, he demanded that the Bolivian government breaks its ties with Israel and declare it a terrorist state. Bolivia previously broke ties with Israel in 2008 under Morales’s left-leaning leadership in protest of Israel’s actions in Gaza. In 2020, right-wing President Jeanine Áñez reestablished ties, Reuters reported.
WTO chief warns Israel-Hamas war could hurt global growth if it spills over - The World Trade Organization’s director-general warned that the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict will impact global growth if it spills over to the wider Middle East region. In an interview with CNBC aired on Monday, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said: “If it spreads beyond where it is now, to the rest of the Middle East, there will be an impact.” “Remember that this region is also the source of a lot of the world’s energy with respect to natural gas as well as oil, which is still very much in use and all over the world. So you will see an impact on global growth, on global trade,” she added. “We do hope it does not amount to that. We’re praying for de-escalation and peace,” she told CNBC’s Martin Soong on the sidelines of the Group of 7 meeting in Osaka, Japan. Economists have cautioned that any possible escalation of the Israel-Hamas war poses a major disruption to the global economy, and could drive up energy prices and disrupt key trade routes. Trade growth is already “quite grim” due to the “fall in aggregate demand across the board,” said Okonjo-Iweala. The WTO cut its trade growth forecast for 2023 amid a global manufacturing slowdown. In October, the organization scaled back on growth estimates in global merchandize trade for this year due to a continued slump that started in the fourth quarter of 2022. Global merchandize trade volume is now projected to grow by 0.8% this year, less than half of the 1.7% increase forecasted in April. The 3.3% growth projected for 2024 remains nearly unchanged from the previous estimate. “The rebound from China has not been as robust after the pandemic as we hoped. We have the real estate crisis in China. European Union growth is slower than we had also hoped,” said the WTO director-general. “The U.S. seems to be doing okay but still, there’s the issue of aggregate demand falling across the board in most regions and both sectors and persistent inflation with interest rates going up higher for long,” she added.
No comments:
Post a Comment