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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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