Bakken operators told to cut flaring or face crude caps

North Dakota, the second-largest U.S. oil-producing state amid booming output from shale, plans to punish crude explorers that fail to curtail the burning of natural gas as waste.

Energy companies that don’t curb so-called gas flaring will face limits on the amount of oil they can pump from the Bakken shale formation, the North Dakota Industrial Commission said in a statement today, July 1.

North Dakota is cracking down on flaring that increases air pollution and also casts a glow in the night sky that can be seen miles away from remote well sites. Oil companies routinely burn off gas that emerges along with crude from wells when local pipelines or demand are insufficient to absorb the fuel.

North Dakota’s daily crude output surpassed 1 MMbbl in April for the first time in history, making the state a bigger oil supplier than OPEC members Ecuador or Qatar. In the U.S., Texas is the only state that pumps more crude than North Dakota, according to the Energy Department.

The industrial commission wants a 26% reduction in gas flaring statewide by the fourth quarter of this year and another 23% by the first quarter of 2015, according to the statement. The commission is comprised of Governor Jack Dalrymple, Attorney General Stenehjem Wayne and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring.

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Keystone foes urge top Nebraska court to void pipeline path

Nebraska landowners opposed to the proposed $5.4 billion Keystone XL pipeline urged the state’s highest court to uphold a judge’s ruling invalidating the route mapped by Governor Dave Heineman and TransCanada Corp.

The property owners urged the state Supreme Court to uphold a February ruling effectively blocking the pipeline. Judge Stephanie Stacy in Lincoln declared TransCanada a common carrier like a railroad. As such, a 2012 law giving the governor control over the path violated a part of the state constitution vesting power in the Public Service Commission.

TransCanada “offers pipeline structures for transportation services, like taxis offer rides to passengers for a fee, and truckers offer cartage for dollars per mile,” the landowners said in a June 20 legal brief. “The currently-proposed pipeline is a structure that will transport crude oil for hire.”

TransCanada, based in Calgary, seeks to build a 1,179-mile (1,897-km) conduit capable of carrying 830,000 bopd from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect to an existing network.

Supporters say Keystone will create jobs and promote energy independence. Opponents say petroleum derived from Alberta’s oil sands will contribute to global warming.

The decision on whether to approve Keystone will fall to President Barack Obama, who may wait until the Nebraska court rules. The judges have yet to schedule arguments, and a decision may not come until after Congress’s midterm elections.

Energy East

TransCanada has said it will seek Canadian government permission to construct a different, longer, pipeline giving it a conduit to the Atlantic Ocean. That proposed 2,700-mile pipeline, called Energy East, would carry 1.1 MMbopd across six provinces to a refinery and export terminal at Saint John, New Brunswick.

Heineman, a Republican who’s leaving office on Dec. 31, and state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who sought to succeed him, argued in April that the three landowners who sued haven’t shown they’ve been injured by the plan and lack standing to sue.

Bruning last month lost the Republican Party’s gubernatorial primary to former Ameritrade Holding Corp. Vice Chairman Pete Ricketts.

David Domina, the landowners’ lawyer and a Democrat seeking a U.S. Senate seat, said his clients have been harmed.

“There is no competitor, different regulator or differently affected landowner to bring this suit,” he said in a phone interview. “The state belongs to the citizens, and they are its saving watchfulness.”

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Circle Oil starts drilling SAH-W1 well in Sebou permit, Morocco

Circle Oil, reported the preliminary results of drilling of the well SAH-W1 in the Sebou Permit, onshore Morocco.

The well is located within the western central area of the Sebou Permit, about 3.2 km to the south west of the main gas gathering station. The well was spud on 19 May and drilled to a TD of 1,263 m MD. Gas shows were encountered at three levels within the target Guebbas sands, but seven inch casing had to be installed (due to mechanical problems) before drilling a six inch hole through the main target interval. The wireline logging confirmed the presence of three gas-bearing zones, and subsequent pressure testing in the six inch hole confirmed permeable high pressure reservoirs.

The rig has been released from this site before running the 4.5 inch liner as this is a non-standard size for drilling these wells and this is being sourced to test and complete the well for production in the future. The net pay from wireline log analysis is 6 m in the Top Guebbas, 6 m in the main target Intra Guebbas and 3 m in the lower part of the Intra Guebbas. The plan is to produce the three zones sequentially from the bottom up, where the highest pressure is present.

Further updates will be provided in due course.

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Lamprell to deliver modules for Upper Zakum field in UAE

Lamprell reports that it has received a new contract award from Petrofac Emirates (Petrofac) for the fabrication and delivery of 29 modules.  

The modules are being constructed for use in connection with the Zakum Development Company’s (ZADCO, one of Abu Dhabi Oil Company (ADNOC) group of companies) landmark Upper Zakum, UZ750 (EPC-2) field development  n Abu Dhabi. The estimated total weight for all of the modules will be approximately 10,000 t.

Lamprell is scheduled to deliver the first shipment of modules in second-quarter 2015, with the final pipe rack expected to be delivered in first-quarter 2016.

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Suncor approves facility to test water treatment, recycling technologies

Suncor Energy and five industry partners have announced an estimated $165 million funding commitment to sanction the construction of a dedicated Water Technology Development Centre (WTDC).

The WTDC, to be located at Suncor' s Firebag facility, will be used to test water treatment and further develop recycling technologies. The goal of the WTDC is to shorten the timeframe needed to develop and commercialize new technologies, as well as significantly enhance existing technologies.

"The WTDC will help us speed up the pace of innovation, while collaboratively managing the risks and costs of technology development," said Steve Williams, Suncor president and CEO. "We expect to see strong benefits by conducting different tests simultaneously, using process fluids in real world conditions to pilot new technologies and prove their commercial viability."

The centre is being pursued as a joint industry project convened under Canada' s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), with testing to begin by early 2017. In addition to Suncor, the partner companies include Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Devon Canada Corporation, Nexen Energy ULC, Shell Canada Energy and Husky Oil Operations Limited.

Knowledge

"Moving forward on the WTDC is a demonstration of the tangible progress that COSIA is making by bringing companies together to share knowledge and advance innovation," says Dan Wicklum, chief executive of COSIA. "The research and testing conducted at the WTDC will allow participating companies to test drive more technologies than could be evaluated by each company alone. This helps to deliver our vision of accelerated environmental performance improvement in Canada' s oil sands."

The structure of the joint industry project will see Suncor construct, own and operate the WTDC while collaborating with the other partners on design, construction and operations -- including specific tests. As a dedicated test facility, the WTDC is expected to overcome the barriers that are common to field testing at commercial production facilities, which are not typically designed to accommodate simultaneous testing of water treatment technologies.

Testing priorities will include minimizing fresh water use and maximizing reliability for steam assisted gravity drainage production. The facility is expected to provide industry with the opportunity to develop new ways of approaching water treatment and recycling, resulting in positive environmental, social and economic outcomes.

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Russia to shut Nord Stream Gas Pipe for maintenance for 11 days

Nord Stream, the world’s longest subsea natural gas pipeline, will halt the link from Russia to Germany for 11 days of planned maintenance.

The works will start June 24, 2014 and require a shutdown first of both lines and then of each pipe separately, Nord Stream said in a statement. Opal Gastransport, which carries natural gas onward from Nord Stream, said upstream maintenance would cut supply by 100% June 24-28 and 50% June 28 to July 4 in a maintenance schedule on its website dated June 2, 2014.

“The temporary interruption of supplies has been factored into the nominations of gas planned for Nord Stream to transport to downstream European partners during 2014,” the company said. “The schedule for these maintenance activities has been agreed and coordinated with Nord Stream’s upstream and downstream pipeline partners well in advance.”

An Gazprom led venture started work on Nord Stream, which ships Russian gas produced at Siberian fields directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea, in April 2010, 15 months after a pricing conflict with Ukraine interrupted transit shipments to European clients. While Gazprom halted supplies to Ukraine on June 16 this year in a comparable dispute, transit flows have thus far been unaffected.

The works will include annual maintenance of mechanical components, as well as testing of the automation system, Nord Stream said.

The 1,224 km Nord Stream pipeline can transport as much as 1.9 Tcf of gas annually, enough to meet more than 12% of the 28 nation EU’s demand. Gazprom cannot currently use the full capacity of Opal, a connecting pipeline onshore Germany, because of EU regulations requiring separate ownership of distribution and production assets.

The European Commission, the bloc’s regulator, may allow Gazprom to ship full volumes via Opal if the Ukraine situation remains unresolved and there are disruptions, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said June 16 in Moscow.

Gazprom, which has a monopoly on pipeline gas exports from Russia, supplies the fuel to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus and Poland and with gas from its storage facilities in the region as well as through Nord Stream and Ukraine.

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How One Can Reduce American "Oil Addiction"?

More than thirty years have passed since the Western countries experienced one of the most serious economic oil crises of the 70's. Undoubtedly some technological innovations have been introduced and economies of most of Western countries are not so oil dependent as in the middle of the seventies. Nevertheless the economies of major developed nations still consume large amount of oil and energy resources.

A few people would argue that due to the development of today's world economy, the demand on the oil or energy resources can be saturated to the full extent in the nearest future. With rapid economic growth of China and more rapid economic growth in India, there are more than enough reasonable grounds to suggest that the demand on oil will be increasing in the next several years or even decades to come.

The largest economy of the world - American economy depends on oil and many energy resources as well. Despite the fact that the USA is one of the largest producers of oil in the world it still has to  import large amount of oil and other energy resources, from various regions of the world. Current  situation in the Middle Eastern region, where large deposits of oil are located is quite volatile and even despite the fact that most of the countries located in Arabian peninsula are widely regarded by many professionals as one of the steadfast allies of the Western countries, there are few reasons to believe that situation will remain the same for a long period of time as dissatisfaction with the policy of the USA in the Middle East is growing and few Arab governments (even if the systems of the governments are not democratic one) can ignore and disparage public opinions in their nations.

Insurgents and other terrorist groups try, not unsuccessfully to damage oil refinery facilities in Iraq in order to obstruct the activities of American and Iraq governments to rebuild and strengthen democracy in this country; on the other hand instability in Iraq does not allow optimists to think that the price on oil will somehow decrease in the nearest future. 

That is why so many specialists accepted favorably recent state of the union address by the president of the USA, in which he stated that the USA would decrease its consumption of oil and become less oil dependent nation. So how this problem can be resolved? What lessons actually were learned from the previous oil crisis? With such incredible advance in technology and mass communication would it not be possible to devise some plan to reduce the dependency of the USA on oil?

Undoubtedly the USA has sufficient financial resources and enough technological capacities to resolve this problem; however it looks like the will to resolve it is lacking. Recently even much poor countries such as Brazil has introduced  new energy saving technologies (for instance it tries to substitute ethanol for oil), many states have also made some notable progress in the development of solar energy technologies which would  allow them to reduce their consumptions of traditional energy sources such as oil and energy.

However these nations are rather the exception from the rule. President has recently proposed increasing of the financing of research projects which might lessen the impact of the looming crisis that the country could face in the next several years; yet one could argue that these research programs will not produce substantial results in the nearest future. So the only solution might be effective introduction of existing energy saving technologies that are already available in the USA and around the globe.