The Company Bringing Natural Gas to Truckers

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/company-bringing-natural-gas-truckers-134640527.html

 

The domestic abundance and competitive pricing of natural gas is pushing the industrial transport industry to consider it as a more cost effective fuel source. In early March BNSF, the railroad wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) announced it will test using liquefied natural gas [LNG] to run its trains. Matthew Rose, CEO of BNSF referred to LNG “a potential transformational change for our railroad and for our industry."

 

The trucking industry would be just as financially motivated as rails to find an alternative to expensive diesel fuel prices.

 

One of the big barriers to trucks using LNG is re-fueling; if you’ve spent any time on major interstates that are the lifeblood of the trucking industry it’s not exactly easy to find a filling station pumping LNG. And until infrastructure is in place it’s a harder sell to get trucks to invest in modifying their engines to take LNG.

 

But the infrastructure piece is gaining momentum. In early April Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-B) announced it is going to build out more LNG-friendly facilities in the U.S. and Canada. A more direct pure-play is Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) a $1.1 billion market cap California company dedicated to building out LNG fueling stations for the trucking industry. Clean Energy Fuels also traffics in compressed natural gas facilities; that’s typically the form used for cars and buses.

 

The company currently has 348 LNG and CNG locations in the U.S. At the end of 2012 it had completed 70 of a planned 150 LNG facilities that will allow heavy-haul truckers to traverse the major I-40, I-10 and I-95 corridors without fear of running out of juice. The company also recently signed a partnership with GE Oil & Gas to make sure those locations will have a ready supply of LNG.

 

Fund manager Ron Muhlnekamp owns the stock. In a recent shareholder note he explained that while he owns natural gas drillers and suppliers, it’s the transportation angle that he thinks is the next wave in the natural gas investment theme, with trucking getting a special shout out.

 

To be clear, Clean Energy Fuels is an aggressive small cap gambit that has yet yet to turn a profit. In 2012 revenues rose 14% and delivery of natural gas climbed 25%.

 

A near-term concern is Chesapeake Energy’s (CHK) planned reduction of its 7.7% stake in Clean Energy to about 1%. That’s not a vote of no confidence, but rather a function of Chesapeake Energy’s need to raise cash.

 

Carla Fried, a senior contributing editor at ycharts.com, has covered investing for more than 25 years. Her work appears in The New York Times, Bloomberg.com and Money Magazine. She can be reached at editor@ycharts.com.

9 oil workers kidnapped by pirates in Nigeria

 

http://www.pennenergy.com/articles/pennenergy/2013/04/9-oil-workers-kidnapped-by-pirates-in-nigeria-.html

 

Nigeria’s Bayelsa State was home to three kidnapping attempts on April 24th. A total of 9 hostages were taken from two vessels by kidnappers, while a third kidnapping attempt was unsuccessful. The identity of the kidnappers is unknown, although they are believed to be the same men accused of killing 12 police officers three weeks ago.
 

The hostages are almost all Nigerian oil workers, but reports indicate a Russian and a Malaysian may be included. The attacks happened at different times and locations. In the largest and most publicized attack, 5 workers were taken from a vessel in the waters off the coast of Brass, a Local Government Area in Nigeria. Fishermen in the area witnessed one kidnapping, reporting the kidnappers boarded the vessel armed and took 5 men and cash.
 

In the other successful kidnapping, located north-east of the first, off the coast of the Port of Harcourt, four men were taken from a container ship. The remaining crew in both kidnappings were left unharmed.
 

A third attempt at a kidnapping happened the same day, as attackers in a speed boat attempted to board another vessel. This time, the vessel increased speed and managed to get away.
 

Bayelsa state, and the water off its coast, is considered an exceptionally turbulent region. Incidents of violence have led to increases in insurance for much of the Gulf of Guinea, which follows Africa’s southward curve from Liberia to Gabon.

OPEC to Bolster Exports on Asian Demand, Oil Movements Reports

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/opec-to-bolster-exports-on-asian-demand-oil-movements-reports.html

 

By Grant Smith

 

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase shipments by 60,000 barrels a day through to the middle of May because of rising demand inAsia, according to tanker tracker Oil Movements.

The group that supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil will boost exports by 0.3 percent to 23.61 million barrels a day in the four weeks to May 11, the researcher said today in an e-mailed report. The figures exclude Angola and Ecuador.

“It’s all going east at the moment, which means that the Chinese are buying,” Roy Mason, the company’s founder said by phone from Halifax, England. “Westbound sailings from the Gulf are drooping.”

Middle East shipments will rise by 0.5 percent to 17.3 million barrels a day in the period, compared with 17.21 million in the four weeks to April 13, according to Oil Movements. That figure includes non-OPEC members Oman and Yemen.

While total OPEC sailings will probably increase in about a month as seasonal demand for driving fuels in the northern hemisphere climbs, the acceleration will probably be weaker than in previous years because of elevated levels of crude inventories held by refiners, Mason said.

Crude on board tankers will average 470.66 million barrels to May 11, up 0.6 percent from the previous period, Oil Movements’ data show. Oil Movements calculates the volumes by tallying tanker bookings. Its figures exclude crude held on vessels for storage.

OPEC’s members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. The group will next meet on May 31 in Vienna to discuss output policy.

To contact the reporter on this story: Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss on sev@bloomberg.net

Ghana Oil Output to More Than Double by 2021 With New Fields

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/ghana-oil-output-to-more-than-double-by-2021-with-new-fields.html

 

Ghana, West Africa’s second-biggest economy, expects oil production to more than double to 250,000 barrels a day by 2021 as output rises at the Jubilee field and other sites start pumping.

 

The country has new crude discoveries at different stages of appraisal and development, Nana Boakye Asafu-Adjaye, chief executive officer of the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corp. known as GNPC, said in an interview in the capital, Accra, yesterday. At the Tullow Oil Plc-operated Jubilee field, 60 kilometers (37 miles) off Ghana’s western coast, output has averaged 110,000 barrels a day over the last three months, he said.

Ghana Oil Output to More Than Double by 2021 With New Fields

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth $3 billion, according to the central bank. Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

 

In the next “five to eight years we will be spending $20 billion” to develop Jubilee and other discoveries, Asafu-Adjaye said. Jubilee, which started output in December 2010, is Ghana’s lone crude-exporting oil field. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, pumped 1.8 million barrels a day in March.

 

Oil displaced cocoa as Ghana’s second-most valuable export in 2012, with shipments worth $3 billion, according to the central bank. Gold remains the country’s top foreign-currency earner. Kosmos Energy Ltd. (KOS) also has a stake in the Jubilee field, while Tullow, Kosmos and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) are developing the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme, or TEN, project.

“First oil from TEN could be in late 2016,” Asafu-Adjaye said. The site may have reserves of 245 million barrels and peak daily production is forecast at 76,000 barrels, he said.

Onshore Exploring

GNPC is also pushing exploration in the onshore Voltaian Basin which stretches from the south to the northern part of Ghana and covers about 40 percent of the country, Asafu-Adjaye said.

 

“We have conducted field mapping and site surveying of selected locations for slim hole drilling,” he said in a speech yesterday. In 2011, GNPC received geophysical data on the region.

 

Tullow’s shares fell 0.9 percent to 1,037 pence in Londonyesterday, bringing the decline this year to 18 percent.

 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.

TOR workers must own shares - Jinapor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201304/104476.php

 

Deputy minister designate for energy, John Jinapor has said he favored giving some shares to workers of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR). He believed this is an innovative way of developing a sense of ownership in the struggling company.

He said this during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Monday. He was answering questions on how to resuscitate TOR.

The former spokesperson for the President Mahama said "when you give employee shares you create a sense of ownership".

He explained that TOR was saddled with technical efficiency and capital infusion challenges. TOR was built to process lower grade crude and cannot refine oil from the new local fields unless significant investment was made.

The refinery has been shut down since October last year.

The Deputy minister designate also said the refinery had secured $30 million from the government for its plant sustainability and profit enhancement programme.

The TOR debt currently stands at $350 million after the government managed to clear almost a billion Ghana cedis in the past four years.

It currently requires about $650 million for its day-to-day operations.

Mr. Jinapor answered questions on nuclear energy options and re-branding Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Deputy Minister Designate for Energy and Petroleum, Mr John Abdulai Jinapor

http://www.ghana.gov.gh/index.php/news/general-news/21389-govt-will-deliver-energy-targets-jinapor

The Deputy Minister Designate for Energy and Petroleum, Mr John Abdulai Jinapor, has assured that government would achieve its short, medium and long term measures instituted to address the energy challenges facing the country.

He said the shortage in generation of electricity would be completely over by 2016 when the government increased its generation capacity to 5000 megawatts.

Mr Jinapor said these when he appeared before the Appointment Committee of Parliament yesterday to be vetted.

He noted that, despite the current power crises, Ghana was still the second largest producer of energy in the Sub-Saharan Africa adding that, apart from South Africa, no country in Africa generated as much electricity as produced in this country.

Mr Jinapor said the power crisis had arisen as a result of the government’s inability to meet the country's peak electricity demand of 1750 megawatts.

He said though Ghana had an installed generation capacity of 2455 Megawatts, the damage to the West African Gas Pipeline last year, knocked out some of the country's electricity generation installations, including the Asogli Power Plant, which he said was producing 200 megawatts.

Mr Jinapor pledged to support the substantive Minister, Mr Emmanuel Armah Kofi Boah, to implement the president's short, medium and long-term solutions to ending the power crisis.

Mr Jinapor said the ministry would also explore the possibility of adopting renewable and nuclear energy as part of long-term efforts to solving the country's electricity problem.

Touching on the challenges facing the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Mr Jinapor said the government had resolved to resource the refinery with about $70 million.

He said government had released US$30 million dollars to the company and had earmarked an additional US$ 37 million be disbursed to the company soon.

He pledged to “push and support the Minister to ensure that, the monies are released immediately to put TOR out of its present predicament”.

He also suggested that, part of the shareholdings in the Tema Oil Refinery should be allocated to the workers of the company to serve as an incentive to motivate them to deliver their best to ensure the success of the refinery of this year

Mr Jinapor who was also the Spokesperson of President John Dramani noted that, it was imperative that, the government provided the necessary infrastructure and some working capital to enable the refinery become a viable profit making entity for the country.

Mr Benjamin Dagadu, a deputy minister designate for the same ministry who also appeared before the committee attributed the energy crisis to the failure by governments over the years to make the investment needed to add an additional 100 megawatts of thermal generation onto the national grade.

He promised to bring his expertise in the energy sector to bear to ensure that, the current energy challenges facing the country became a thing of the past.

Source: ISD (Gilbert Ankrah)

Israel seeks millions of gallons of JP-8 from US

Israel wants to buy jet fuel from the US for its Air Force fleet

http://thefuelhandler.com/industry-news?item_id=6164 

The government of Israel is looking to purchase 864 million gallons of petroleum products, including jet fuel, from the US at a cost of around $2.67 billion (€2 billion), the US Department of Defense says.

 

Most of the jet fuel will be consumed by the nation's Air Force, while the diesel and unleaded petrol products will be used for the Israel Defense Forces' land-based equipment.

 

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement: 'Due to volatility in the oil market, this notification requests a total quantity of these various fuels rather than specific quantities of individual fuels. The US vendors are unknown at this time due to the competitive bid process for the supply source(s). There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.'

 

The US has been selling JP-8 aviation fuel to Israel for a number of years in connection with the American foreign aid programme.

 

The agency continued: 'The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives.

'The proposed sale of the JP-8 aviation fuel will enable Israel to maintain the operational capability of its aircraft. The diesel fuel and unleaded gasoline will be used for Israeli ground vehicles. Israel will have no difficulty absorbing this additional fuel into its armed forces.

 

'The proposed sale of these three types of fuel will not alter the basic military balance in the region and will provide Israel with the necessary flexibility to balance its individual fuel type needs as the situation requires.'