A popular topic of conversation among industry participants at recent petrochemical gatherings in the US and abroad has been the looming US ethylene boom.
More specifically, how real it is and what, if anything, might stop it from happening.
Posts Tagged ‘shale gas’
Building boom: five things keeping US ethylene producers up at night
By Bernardo Fallas | April 19, 2013 12:01 AM Comments (1)
Do rig counts tell us much about oil and natural gas supplies anymore?
By Samantha Santa Maria | April 5, 2013 01:40 PM Comments (4)
Consider the facts: Lower-48 gas production averaged at 72.1 Bcf/d in January, close to all-time highs, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Gas rigs, meanwhile, were at 14-year lows, averaging at 434 for the same month.
Simple answer to the question: Not if you’re trying to gauge supply, they’re not.
Recent crude-carrying train derailments in US heat up crude by rail safety debate
By Bridget Hunsucker | March 29, 2013 06:16 PM Comments (0)
Two trains carrying crude oil derailed in the US this month, making headlines that garnered more attention to a recent debate over the in-vogue shipping method’s environmental impact.
The popularity of crude by rail shipments has opponents of major proposed crude pipeline projects (like Transcanada’s Keystone XL) asking the question: is rail transport safe?
Moot court contest will focus on hydraulic fracturing
By Rodney White | March 13, 2013 06:19 PM Comments (1)
Beginning this week, about a hundred college students and coaches will be experiencing a trial by fire, or if you like, trial before real judges on a real hot button issue: fracking.
They will be appearing in moot court sessions in which they will be arguing the pros and cons of the practice that has dramatically changed the US energy market. On the last day of the three-day encounter, the top students will be making their cases before real judges. One is a judge on the West Virginia Court of Appeals; another is a West Virginia Supreme Court justice. Two sit on US District Court benches in West Virginia.
Some final thoughts: Natural gas has taken back CERAWeek
By Katharine Fraser and Samantha Santa Maria | March 7, 2013 05:04 PM Comments (2)
Last year, with US natural gas down in the $2/MMBtu dumps, no one wanted to talk about gas. No one.
Tight oil! Shale oil! Metallurgical coal exports! Steam coal exports! Solar! Anything but natural gas.
But these last few days — even on IHS CERAWeek’s day one “Oil Day” — the Houston industry conference was all about gas.
The irony: because gas is so cheap.
CERAWeek day 1 final: how the Saudis handled a cyberattack
By News Desk | March 5, 2013 04:08 PM Comments (0)
Asked by IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, what lessons he could offer the energy industry from the cyber attack on Saudi Aramco last August, that company’s president and CEO, Khalid al-Falih warned participants against underestimating their dependence on their information technology and systems.
“They become like oxygen,” Falih said in his keynote remarks Tuesday. “You think you can live without it, but you can’t. If you lose it, you immediately get paralyzed.”
How afraid should you be of ethane rejection?
By Samantha Santa Maria | February 26, 2013 12:38 PM Comments (0)
If you have any dabblings in the natural gas or natural gas liquids business: be very, very afraid.
Because it is growing and it is *everywhere*.
As Chesapeake has an earnings call, there’s definitely something — and somebody — missing
By Bill Holland | February 22, 2013 02:54 PM Comments (1)
It was just another earnings conference call, but it marked the end of an era.
For 80 calls, listeners to Chesapeake Energy’s earnings were treated to the Raging Bull of America’s natural gas: founder, chairman and CEO Aubrey McClendon.
McClendon talked about burying OPEC, converting everything that moved to run on natural gas, and chastised Wall Street analysts for failing to fully appreciate his corporate strategy of “go big or go home.”
A few years back at the Howard Weil Energy Conference in New Orleans, as natural gas prices plunged below $4/Mcf and gas supplies climbed and climbed, McClendon swaggered into his presentation and told the audience that things looked grim.
“But that’s not interesting,” he’d smile and say. He’d tell his own, better, story.
US chemical makers stuffing their piggy banks ahead of expansion boom, expenses
By Bernardo Fallas | January 29, 2013 12:23 AM Comments (1)
Make no mistake: The US chemical industry faces its share of challenges, whether on the regulatory or market dynamics front, as it seeks to bask in the feedstock advantage afforded by shale gas.
But capital should not be one of them. Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s betting on UK shale gas? Cuadrilla, and maybe somebody big
By John Roberts | January 26, 2013 05:06 PM Comments (7)
Who’s betting on UK shale gas…and who’s betting against it? Right now there’s a dramatic gulf between pessimistic statements at last week’s World Energy Forum meeting in Davos that UK shale gas is no great game changer, and the fact that the next few days might witness an energy major farming in to the one company that intends to revolutionise UK gas production.
To start with the pessimism, if only to err on the side of caution. At Davos on Thursday, Centrica CEO Sam Laidlaw, one of Britain’s biggest gas chiefs, was quoted as saying that said it would be at least a decade before the UK saw any shale gas production and that, even then, it would not be “the game changer we’ve seen in North America”.