London — Britain’s natural gas fracking industry is using a cold snap that’s gripped large swathes of Europe this week and laid bare weaknesses in the UK’s energy supply to make its pitch.
Britain’s natural gas market has been stretched to its limits as the coldest spell since 2010 tests the nation’s energy and transport network. UK pipeline manager National Grid Plc even urged industry to curb its gas usage while the cold weather persisted. (…)
European Union nations are poised to endorse the biggest overhaul of the market they created more than a decade ago to rein in pollution, a move that may lift prices of power generated from fossil fuels.
The measures, due for final approval in Brussels on Tuesday, impose tougher requirements on thousands of companies to reduce greenhouse gases or pay higher costs for their carbon dioxide emissions. They’re part of a plan to clear up a flaw in the market that left the cost of CO2 permits well below the level needed to stir investments in green energy.
by Alex Nussbaum, February 23, 2018 in BloombergNews
Cube development,’ which taps multiple layers of shale all at once, could accelerate the U.S. shale boom and make the global supply glut even worse.
In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before.
Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation. More than 1 million pounds of drilling rigs, bulldozers, tanker trucks and other equipment spread out over a dusty 16-acre expanse. As of November, the 19 wells here collectively pumped almost 20,000 barrels of crude per day, according to company reports.
by Julian Lee, February 11, 2018 in BloombergGadlfy
The latest surge in U.S. oil output will probably hasten the country’s rise to the top of the producer pile. More important, it’s starting to look as though at least half of OPEC’s nightmare scenario for 2018 — a surge in shale output and slowdown in demand growth — is coming true.
Last week’s avalanche of releases from the U.S. Department of Energy showed daily oil production above 10 million barrels a day for the first time since 1970.
Surging shale production is poised to continue pushing U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.
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New technology, new fields
The next phase of shale output growth depends on techniques to squeeze more oil from each well. Companies are now putting sensors on drill bits to more precisely access oil deposits, using artificial intelligence and remote operators to get the most out of equipment and trained engineers.
Experts say one annual increase doesn’t indicate China is returning to an era when its emissions grew by leaps and bounds. But the increase illustrates the challenges and compromises Beijing must juggle if it wants to stoke its economy and at the same time keep its environmental promises. […]
HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.
The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.
Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques.
La fermeture des centrales nucléaires belges pourrait entraîner une augmentation de 50% des émissions de CO2 liées à la production d’énergie d’ici 2030, selon le professeur d’économie Johan Albrecht (UGent – Université de Gand), qui est également membre de l’institut de réflexion Itinera. Cela alors que le gouvernement fédéral et les entités fédérées doivent négocier dans les semaines à venir le Pacte énergétique, qui doit fixer l’avenir de la production d’électricité en Belgique.
Activity in Pennsylvania’s gas fields slowed in recent years amid low prices, but operators ramped up drilling in 2017, and they’re expecting to drill even more in the new year.
More than 220 million Americans are preparing for the coldest New Year in living memory as the cold snap that has swept across the northern states prompts chaos across the country.
Temperatures atop the highest peak in the north-east, Mount Washington, hit a shocking -37 degrees celsius – breaking the previous record at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire of -35C which was set in 1933.
by Joshua Nevett, December 23, 2017 in DailyStar, UK
A GLOBAL cool down lasting 120 years will trigger “more intense” winters that threaten months of freezing temperatures and snow “within a few years”, climate scientists have warned.
Climate change is back on the agenda with a global climate conference kicking off Monday in the German city of Bonn.
Who’s coming, what are the key debates about and how green will this meeting be? Five things to know about the U.N. conference known as COP23, which runs from Nov. 6-17.
When it comes to climate change, there are worlds apart between Germany’s aspiring Jamaica Coalition partners. It is all about coal and it is not certain the divide can be bridged.
Les scientifiques en déduisent que le réchauffement global actuel pourrait potentiellement être “sans précédent” sur les 100 derniers millions d’années. L’étude de ces géochimistes, publiée dans Nature Communications, constitue une sorte de pavé dans la mare des paléoclimatologues qui utilisent depuis les années 1950 ce “paléothermomètre” aidant à bâtir les modèles actuels sur le réchauffement climatique
Selon les prévisions annoncées dans l’édition d’octobre du Commodity Markets Outlook, les prix des produits énergétiques (pétrole, gaz naturel et charbon) progresseront seulement de 4 % en 2018, après l’envolée de 28 % de cette année.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Southeast Asian demand for oil will keep growing until at least 2040 as emerging nations there rely on the fossil fuel to transport their rapidly growing populations, ship goods and make plastics, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
Oil usage in the region will expand to around 6.6 million barrels per day by 2040 from 4.7 million bpd now, with the number of road vehicles increasing by two-thirds to around 62 million, the agency said in a report. It did not make any forecasts beyond 2040.
by Patrice Geoffron, 23 octobre 2017 in Le CerclesdesEconmistes, Boursorama
(…) le gaz américain pourrait bouleverser les équilibres mondiaux, avec des conséquences non moins drastiques que pour le pétrole. Les ressources américaines de gaz sont abondantes et, en juillet 2017, le prix interne a atteint son point le plus bas depuis 12 ans, augurant de sa compétitivité à l’export.
La découverte a été effectuée par des scientifiques français du CNRS, dans ce groupe qui vivait sur l’île de Petrels, en terre Adélie. Hormis les deux bébés manchots survivants, ils n’ont retrouvé que des corps d’animaux affamés et des oeufs non-éclos. Ces chercheurs, soutenus par le Fonds mondial pour la nature (WWF), observaient depuis 2010 cette colonie. Selon eux, l’étendue inhabituelle de la banquise a contraint les parents à aller plus loin chercher leur nourriture. Leur progéniture ont succombé à la faim.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
