Putin Orders Gazprom Start Gas Pipeline to China  
Shell Utica Pennsylvania gas discoveries 11 mm cfgpd+  
Workforce growing at GE's Texas locomotive plant
Arkansas Clean Fuel Rebate Funds Expended  

Port of Gothenburg  30% discount for ships that convert to LNG.  

Port of Gothenburg  30% discount for ships that convert to LNG.
Monday, September 15, 2014
In an effort to speed up the transition to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and improve the environment, the Port of Gothenburg, Sweden, plans to re-work its port charge, offering a 30% discount for ships that convert to LNG.

The reward system is based on two environmental indexes: the environmental ship index (ESI) and the clean shipping index (CSI).

Edvard Molitor said: "We have chosen ESI as it is the largest international index. Our customers have requested that we use the same system that is used internationally."

Edvard Molitor continued: "Everyone is agreed that the transition will take place sooner or later but we wanted to take the first step and speed up the process."

The port charge will come into effect from January 1, 2015; and the discount will apply up to and including December 2018.

According to a company press release, the reason for introducing the new port charge from 2015 is due to new EU sulphur regulations coming into force that same year.

Arkansas Clean Fuel Rebate Funds Expended
Times Record Staff Sunday, September 14, 2014
Just a couple months after being released, funds in the Clean Fuel Vehicle Rebate Program have been expended by the Arkansas Energy Office, a division of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

Nearly $150,000 in rebates were awarded starting in July on a first-come, first-served basis through the Arkansas Gaseous Fuels Rebate Program, according to a news release.

The program allowed company vehicle fleet operators to purchase or convert existing vehicles to natural gas or propane. The rebate amount is dependent upon the cost of conversion or incremental cost of a clean fuel vehicle and allows for a rebate equivalent to the lesser of 50 percent of the conversion or incremental cost or $4,500 per vehicle.
The Arkansas Energy Office administers the Arkansas Gaseous Fuels Rebate Program, as authorized by Arkansas Act 532 of 2013. The program supports the continued development of a publicly accessible, statewide network of alternative fuel filling stations and incentives for the purchase/conversion of fleet vehicles to clean-burning fuels such as compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
More information can be found at www.ArkansasEnergy.org.

Workforce growing at GE's Texas locomotive plant
  By GORDON DICKSON Fort Worth Star-TelegramSeptember 5, 2014 

 Discussed issues such as supply-chain sustainability, safety and next-generation locomotives.

 Even topics that once seemed pie-in-the-sky, such as converting the nation's locomotive fleet to natural gas - which would dramatically reduce emissions compared to diesel-burning locomotives - are being explored, said Blair Wimbush, chief sustainability officer for Norfolk Southern. Even so, such dramatic change is likely many years away, as it would require railroads to install a natural gas infrastructure at essentially every fueling point on their grid.

 "I wouldn't say it's an insurmountable obstacle, if we could have locomotives that ran on a combination of natural gas and diesel," he said. "But I don't know what the timeline is."

 Lovenburg added that, because natural gas takes up 1.7 times as much volume as diesel, railroads would have to add a fuel car to carry a supply of natural gas - similar to how steam engines in the early 20th century had to pull along a coal car.

 Deb Frodl, global executive director of GE's "ecomagination" initiative, said hosting the symposium in Fort Worth "gives us a perfect opportunity to listen to our customers and the challenges they face."

 FORT WORTH, Texas — Locomotives No. 8137 and 8139 are all but ready to roll.
 The General Electric train engines are freshly painted with Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF Railway's signature orange and black scheme. They have passed the "rain test" - during which pressurized water is sprayed onto their rooftops to check for leaks - and some time in the next few hours workers at GE Transportation's enormous facility in far north Fort Worth will open a pair of giant bay doors and take the vehicles for a 20- to 40-mile test drive on railroad tracks connected to the factory.

 If all goes well during the test drive, the GE C4 Evolution vehicles then will be turned over to BNSF for use in the railroad's growing fleet of cleaner-burning diesel machines.

 "These two locomotives likely will be hauling freight by Thursday," Walter Amaya, plant manager of GE's facility, proudly boasted as he offered visitors a tour.

 Nineteen months have passed since GE Transportation, a subsidiary of General Electric, opened the plant. The operation has steadily grown and now employs more than 500 people - two weeks ago adding a second shift to meet growing demand from railroads, Amaya said. The factory now cranks out an average of 1.2 locomotives per day, he said.

 Most of the company's workers are in the locomotive factory - with roughly 300 people working a 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift, and 100 working from 3:15 p.m. to 11 p.m., Amaya said. GE also operates a separate building adjacent to the locomotive factory that specializes in building mining equipment.

 One of its top customers is BNSF, which operates an intermodal rail yard just a couple of miles south of the GE plant. BNSF intends to buy 500 locomotives in the coming year, with roughly half being built at GE's Fort Worth plant, said John Lovenburg, BNSF environmental vice president.

 With just under 1 million square feet of floor space, GE's Fort Worth facility is the equivalent of five Wal-Mart Supercenters under one roof.

 Workers do their jobs in one of 30 stations, and it takes about five weeks to assemble a locomotive. At one of the first stations, sheets of steel are neatly stacked, waiting to be forged into various parts for the vehicles. Nearby, pairs of wheels and axles wait to be installed on trucks, which are then placed on the locomotive chassis in an area known as "bottomside assembly," so-called because the chassis are flipped upside down so the workers can more easily do their welding.

 Each locomotive is held together with an astounding 16,000 pounds of weld wire, Amaya said.

 Not far away, engines built in Grove City, Pa., and shipped to Fort Worth are ready to be installed in a locomotive's belly. There's even a lone "Tier Four" engine designed to meet stricter federal emissions standards beginning in 2015.

 The tour of the GE plant was a chance for members of the media to get a rare glimpse inside the Fort Worth facility, as industry leaders gathered for a three-day discussion on how to make railroads more efficient and sustainable. The annual Railroad Sustainability Symposium was attended by executives from GE, BNSF, Norfolk Southern and organizations such as Wal-Mart, UPS and the Environmental Defense Fund.
Shell Utica Pennsylvania gas discoveries 11 mm cfgpd+
Friday, September 05, 2014
HOUSTON -- Shell has announced new discovery wells -- Neal and Gee -- within the Utica formation in Tioga County, Pennsylvania.

These wells were drilled to a total measured depth of approximately 4,420 and 4,724 m (14,500 and 15,500 ft) with lateral lengths of 945 m (3,100 ft) at Gee and 1,280 m (4,200 ft) at Neal, respectively. These results are comparable to the best publically announced thus far in the emerging Southeast Ohio Utica dry gas play.

The Gee and Neal discovery wells extend the sweet spot of the Utica formation beyond Southeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, where previous discoveries have been located, and into an area where Shell holds a major leasehold position of approximately 430,000 acres. The Gee well was drilled over 100 miles to the northeast of the nearest horizontal Utica producer, and had an initial flowback rate of 11.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. Gee has been on production for nearly one year. Shell began production of the Neal well in February, with observed peak flowback rates of 26.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

“This successful discovery is the result of solid technical work in our onshore business” said Marvin Odum, Shell’s Upstream Americas Director. “Last year, we refocused our resources plays strategy to select fewer plays with specific scale and economic characteristics to best suit our portfolio. The Appalachian basin is one of those areas, and these two high-pressure wells both exhibit exceptional reservoir quality.”

Shell is currently awaiting results from four additional Utica wells drilled in Tioga County, and anticipates those wells will produce later this year.

Putin Orders Gazprom Start Gas Pipeline to China
by  Reuters, September 01, 2014
US KHATYN,  – President Vladimir Putin, presiding over a ceremony in Russia's Far East, ordered on Monday the start of construction for Gazprom's 'Power of Siberia' pipeline, which is planned to bring the first Russian gas to China in 2019. In May, Gazprom and China CNPC signed a $400 billion deal to ship 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to China annually over 30 years.

Gazprom said on Saturday it plans to launch its Chayanda gas field at the end of 2018, aiming to ship the first gas to China in 2019. Chayanda is key to supplying China and will produce up to 25 bcm a year at its peak.