Natural gas - Special Report

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Natural gas - Special Report

Frack contamination [hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction]

Frack contamination [hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction]

Canada's Fracking Struggles

The Huffington Post News Editors/ Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica

Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.

The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.

The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half at a neighboring site.

As furious debate over fracking continues in the United States, it is instructive to look at how a similar gas boom is unfolding for our neighbor to the north.

To a large extent, the same themes have emerged as Canada struggles to balance the economic benefits drilling has brought with the reports of water contamination and air pollution that have accompanied them.

The Canadian boom has differed in one regard: The western provinces' exuberant embrace of large-scale fracking offers a vision of what could happen elsewhere if governments clear away at least some of the regulatory hurdles to growth. More >>

Canada's Fracking Struggles

Canadian Business/  By Michael McCullough While TransCanada Corp. stands mired knee-deep in the Keystone XL oil pipeline debate, its biggest rival in its core gas business is getting a whole lot bigger. On Oct. 17 Kinder Morgan Inc., America’s biggest natural gas shipper, announced a US$21-billion bid to take over El Paso Corp., the No. 2. Together the companies own 125,000 kilometres of pipe.

"Now that KMP is by far the biggest pipeline distributor of natural gas, that will also give them pricing power over the market," Chris Jarvis, president of Caprock Risk Management told Reuters.

Like ExxonMobil’s US$41-billion acquisition of shale gas producer XTO Energy in 2009, this is a massive bet on the upside of suddenly cheap and abundant natural gas. Instead of hedging away from gas, as TransCanada and many other companies appear to be doing, it’s a bet that gas will play a much bigger role in our energy future, probably at the expense of oil.

A decade ago TransCanada Pipelines, as it was then known, was a pure-play natural gas shipper from producing areas in Western Canada to markets in Eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest. Past CEO Hal Kvisle and his successor, Russ Girling, have since diversified into oil transportation and power generation.

Diversification is the conventional wisdom in Canada's energy business right now. Enbridge Inc., which used to control Canadian oil exports to the U.S., has become the largest gas distributor in Ontario and invested in wind farms. Enbridge boss Pat Daniel was just named Canada's 2011 CEO of the Year by Caldwell Partners in a nod to this strategy. By contrast, gas giant Encana Corp. was punished by investors following its spinoff of Cenovus Energy. Now TransCanada is staking a good deal of its future in an oil pipeline that could end up being rejected because of political considerations.

Kinder Morgan’s move is a rebuke to that thinking. Its investment in gas dwarfs the investment Kinder is contemplating in oil lines such as its Trans-Mountain system in Alberta and B.C. Only time will tell which strategy is the right one.

Gunmen Blow Up Portion of Egyptian Gas Pipeline to Israel

Masked gunmen blew up a terminal of the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan in a predawn attack Tuesday, security officials said.

The officials said the attack was carried out by at least four assailants. The terminal is located in the city of El-Arish in the northern part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, about 30 miles west of the Israeli border.

The attackers ordered the guards on duty to leave and then blew up the terminal, starting a huge fire that sent flames shooting into the air that lit up the night sky, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

There were no casualties, they said.

It was the second attack on the pipeline in as many weeks and the fourth since an 18-day uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak's regime on Feb. 11.

No one claimed responsibility for Tuesday's explosion but disgruntled Bedouin tribesmen in the area have been blamed for attacking the pipeline in the past. Islamists opposed to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel have also been suspected.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07/11/gunmen-blow-up-egyptian-gas-pipeline-to-israel/#ixzz1RrJ4Shpa

Gunmen Blow Up Portion of Egyptian Gas Pipeline to Israel

Interview 180: The Future of Natural Gas Supply to Europe

Michael Emerson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, which is an independent think-tank focused on probing European Union issues through research, debates and publications. During part of a 20-minute interview on February 21, 2011, Emerson discussed Europe's dependence on natural gas from the east, the current status of planned pipelines to deliver natural gas and Germany's role in the energy game with Russia.

Northstream, Nabucco and Southstream are three proposed pipelines that could deliver natural gas and oil to western Europe along routes running under the Baltic Sea to Germany, across Turkey to the Balkans and under the Black Sea to Bulgaria. The projected goal by the European Union and its neighbors is to diversify the sources of energy resources, thereby bypassing troubled transit routes of natural gas from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine. Emerson discusses in particular the current status of Nabucco and how Germany played a significant role in stepping back to allow the project to take shape.

Video: Emerson Interview Part 1

Video: Emerson Interview Part 2

Transcript: Michael Emerson

Interview 180: The Future of Natural Gas Supply to Europe

Gas pipeline explodes in east-central Canada

Gas pipeline explodes in east-central Canada

Gas pipeline explodes in east-central Canada

Egipto no ha reactivado el suministro de gas a Israel

Tras la explosión que daño el mayor gasoducto de Egipto en el Sinaí Norte hace una semana, dando como consecuencia la temporal suspensión del suministro de gas a Israel, todavía se sigue esperando la reactivación del mismo.
En el momento del incidente, hubo promesas que en pocos días, el Estado hebreo contaría nuevamente con su importación de gas, pero ya han pasado 7 días y no se tiene promesas certeras a corto plazo sobre la reanudación del suministro.
Egipto provee el 40% del gas que consume Israel.
En las últimas semanas, a pesar de haberse descubierto enormes reservas de gas al norte de Israel, el gobierno decidió renovar el acuerdo de abastecimiento con el país egipcio, con lo que podría indicar que Israel, todavía no planificaba autoabastecerse del suministro de gas.

Egipto no ha reactivado el suministro de gas a Israel

La Sherrit canadiense en Cuba: Niquel, cobalto, petroleo, gas y ganancias, muchas ganancias

Sherrit International Corporation http://www.sherritt.com/, la compañia extranjera con mayor volumen de inversiones y operaciones en Cuba, con la cual tiene un joint venture al 50%, realizo una conferencia el pasado jueves 6 de Marzo para discutir los resultados financieros de la compañia en el 2007 en sus oficinas centrales en el distrito financiero de la ciudad canadiense de Toronto.

En el informe que fue dado a conocer no se exponen los datos por unidades de negocios, por lo que hemos debido de extraer los mismos con la debida precuacion y solo exponer en este post aquellos sobre los cuales no tenemos una duda razonable.

Los principales resultados alcanzados por la compañia son los siguientes:

• Los Ingresos Netos se incrementan en un 51% alcanzado la cifra record de 370 millones de dolares, lo que fija igualmente un nuevo record para los dividendos por acciones de $1.80 [al cierre del 2007 la Sherrit ha emitido 337.4 millones de acciones]
• Nuevos records en la produccion de metales y energia
• Las cuatro unidades de negocios de la compañia registran nuevos records de Ingresos Brutos
• Adquisicion de Dynamic Corporation por 1.6 billones de dolares
• Las expansiones planificadas en metales y energia se desarrollan bien

De acuerdo con los analisis realizado por la corporacion, estos resultados excepcionales son el resultado de la combinacion de dos factores claves:

1. El alto precio en el mercado mundial durante todo el 2007 de las comodities que produce la compañia. El niquel disfruto de un precio promedio de $16.87/lb, $5.85 mayor que en el 2006. En tanto el del cobalto fue de $27.99/lb con un incremento de $12.77.
2. Un gran desenvolvimiento operaciones de todas las unidades de negocios

Los negocios de la Sherrit en Cuba.-

Las fases 1 y 2 de la expansion de la joint venture en Moa marchan bien y se pronostica que las mismas incrementen la produccion en 4,000 y 9,000 toneladas de niquel mas cobalto.

Por su parte la aprobacion por parte de las autoridades cubanas de la expansion del proyecto energetico de Boca de Jaruco comenzara a ejecutarse en el 2008.

La produccion de niquel mas cobalto alcanzo una cifra record de 33,661 toneladas, que representan 3,806 toneladas mas que en el 2006 [12.7%]. Mientras los Ingresos Brutos crecen en un 48%, la Ebitda lo hace en un 83% [No es un termino contable reconocido por el GAAP: en ingles es Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization; Ingresos antes de Intereses, Taxes, Depreciacion y Amortizacion].

La explotacion de petroleo ascendio a 30,637 barriles diarios y los ingresos asociados se incrementaron en un 12% y la Ebitda en un 6%, gracias a los elevados precios del petroleo en el mercado mundial y a la eficiencia operacional. La corporacion firmo igualmente un nuevo contrato [Production Sharing Agreement] para la explotacion de otro bloque. Continuan las conversaciones con las autoridades cubanas para obtener nuevas concesiones y se espera mantener los niveles de extraccion en la zonas en operaciones.

La generacion de electricidad en el complejo de Boca de Jaruco fijo un nuevo record con 2,288GWh, gracia a la ampliacion de la capacidad instalada en 65MW. Ebitda crece respecto al 2006 en 12.1 millones para fijar el nuevo record en 83.6 millones de dolares. La ampliacion de la actual planta generadora de electricidad empleando gas acompañante sumara otros 150 MW a la misma para totalizar 526 MW. Para el año 2010 se prevee que el proyecto funcione a plena capacidad, en tanto se ha aplicado para certificarlo por el UN's Clean Development Mechanism.

Comportamiento de las acciones de Sherrit actualizadas al dia de hoy

La Sherrit canadiense en Cuba: Niquel, cobalto, petroleo, gas y ganancias, muchas ganancias