Long reliant on heating oil due to its older housing stock, New England came late to the natural gas market compared to the rest of the country.

Energy analysts predict that by 2010, and perhaps sooner, there won’t be enough supply to fulfill the region’s energy needs. But plans to build liquefied natural gas terminals in New England face stiff opposition.
Opponents say highly flammable LNG is too risky to store in heavily populated areas, and security measures to protect tankers that bring in LNG shipments will be a burden. Some have proposed putting terminals offshore, but those plans concern fishermen and environmentalists.
One option being trumpeted by Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri and others is two new LNG terminals being built in Canada that can use an existing underground pipeline to send gas to New England, according to enn.com
But the plan depends heavily on the goodwill of another government--and its regulations--for a crucial energy source. Some say gas from Canada could be more expensive, and there’s no guarantee how much gas the New England market would get.
“You have elected officials that say, `Let’s build LNG facilities in the (Canadian) Maritime Provinces and bring the gas here,’“ said Tom Kiley, president and chief executive of the Northeast Gas Association, a Needham, Mass., nonprofit industry trade group that and supports building an LNG terminal in New England. “Well, they don’t have control over where that gas goes.“
Long reliant on heating oil due to its older housing stock, New England came late to the natural gas market compared to the rest of the country. Thirty-five percent of households in New England use natural gas, the lowest percentage among all regions of the country, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Fifty-five percent of US households heat with natural gas, according to the agency.
Natural gas demand in New England is expected to grow 1.4 percent annually on average through 2025, according to the EIA; that translates into a 35 percent increase in usage during that time.
While that level of growth may not seem extraordinary, the key is its effect during so-called peak days, when demand is highest and the system is strained. Experts say supply is stretched thin even now during peak periods, because the main and secondary pipelines operate at capacity. As recently as January 2004, the region endured a gas crunch when high demand put unexpected pressure on the infrastructure and caused prices to spike.
Also, New England is at the end of the pipeline network and has no underground storage capacity, which can make it especially susceptible to weather problems or disruptions.
“We’re close to capacity at peak days, and if that is affected by something we haven’t planned for, then that’s a cause for real concern,“ said John Shea, director of environment and energy programs at the New England Governors Conference.
About 80 percent of New England’s gas now comes through pipelines from western Canada, reserves in US waters in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore deposits near Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. The remainder comes from ships transporting LNG to a terminal in Everett, Mass., a few miles from Boston.
To help meet the region’s growing demands, energy companies have proposed at least seven LNG projects in New England, from Maine to Connecticut. Only one has received federal approval--a proposed terminal in Fall River, Mass., that’s opposed by local and state officials from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which Fall River borders.
Across the border in Canada, construction has already begun on facilities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia due to begin production in 2008. The two could yield up to 2 billion cubic feet per day of gas--nearly half the current maximum daily usage in New England.
At the 29th Annual Conference of the New England Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers in August, US and Canadian officials discussed the LNG projects. Carcieri, the conference’s co-chair, said unlike New England, Canadians eagerly support them.

Reliability and congestion are issues that have been a struggle for utility managers and regulators across the West Coast.

There is general consensus that the West needs more long-distance power lines.
The big question is, who pays for them? Another is, who controls them? And finally, how much should it cost to use them?
Utility managers and regulators say those questions need to be answered soon - before demand outstrips the power supply to some of the fastest-growing areas of the nation.
Otherwise, the risk of a blackout, like the one that left the East Coast in the dark in 2003, keeps rising.
Two years ago, the Bonneville Power Administration completed a transmission system expansion project in the Seattle area, reducing the risk of massive power failures, enquirer.com said.
“It reinforced a key link that would have, for sure, put the Seattle area in danger of blackouts had it not been constructed,“ said Ed Mosey, spokesman for the Portland-based federal power marketing agency.
In Arizona, the largest utility in the state is proposing a new $3 billion pair of 500,000-volt lines to bring power 600 miles from coal and wind turbine plants in Wyoming. It would also let the Arizona Public Service Co. send excess power from the Southwest to the north.
“Arizona’s one of the two fastest-growing areas of the country, along with Nevada,“ said Jim McDonald, spokesman for Arizona Public Service.
The utility relies on coal, nuclear and natural gas-fired generating plants for electricity to accommodate growth that includes Arizona cities like Gilbert, which topped the US Census Bureau’s list of fastest-growing cities, with at least 100,000 new people from April 2000 to July 2004.
But that generating capacity has to have a way to reach new businesses and homes--meaning more high-voltage wires, McDonald said.
“So it’s very important to have additional infrastructure in the West because of the way the region is growing,“ McDonald said. “And there hasn’t been a substantial investment in that transmission infrastructure.“
On Nov. 17, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed transmission-pricing reforms to promote what commissioners said was long overdue investment in energy infrastructure.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which President Bush signed in August, directed the commission to develop incentive-based rates for interstate power transmission. The reforms adopted Nov. 17 will implement those incentives and provide regulatory certainty needed to reassure utilities and investors, officials said.
The goal is to increase power-grid reliability and lower costs by reducing transmission congestion between states, commissioners said.
“No one is looking at the lights going out,“ said US Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. “But what we’re looking at now is how do you make the system work better, and how do you avoid duplicate investment in very expensive transmission lines.“
Reliability and congestion are issues that have been a struggle for utility managers and regulators across the West for more than a decade, as they have watched transmission line construction fail to keep pace with electricity demand.
“We should have been making plans to build out the transmission system years ago,“ said David Kvamme, spokesman for PacifiCorp.
The Portland-based utility serves 1.6 million customers in six Western states and must balance regulatory demands in each state with the need for additional transmission capacity.
But transmission investment actually declined for 23 years from 1975 to 1998, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission figures.
And over that period, electricity demand more than doubled, resulting in a significant decrease in transmission capacity. Investment has been up and down since, but still trails well behind demand, regulators said.

“We’re in the midst of a historic shift in the way this country regulates electric utilities,“ said Bryan Lee, a commission spokesman in Washington, DC.

The Syrian assets being sold by Petro-Canada are valued at about $1 billion or more.

The flagship state energy firms of China and India, normally arch-rivals in the race for overseas oilfields, are teaming up for the first time to bid for a $1 billion package of assets in Syria.
China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) (ONGC.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) are bidding for Petro-Canada’s interest in a major Syrian oil and gas joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell, a person close to the situation told Reuters on Friday.
There are other bidders for the assets, the source said, without elaborating.
It is the first time the Chinese and Indian oil giants have
joined forces in their efforts to secure reserves to feed their booming economies, which require more and more imported oil, Reuters reported.
Petro-Canada said in September it might sell its 38 percent stake in the Shell-operated Al Furat venture in Syria, which accounts for about 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent of the company’s daily output.
The Al Furat venture pumps as much as 50 percent of Syria’s production, according to Petro-Canada’s Web site. It produces oil and gas from 36 fields with 220 wells in three concession areas.
The Syrian assets being sold by Petro-Canada are valued at about $1 billion or more, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. This is higher than some analysts’ estimates.
The assets could fetch $800 million to $900 million in proceeds, Scotia Capital analyst Greg Pardy wrote in a note to clients in September.
ONGC has been beaten by China’s state oil giants in the $4.2 billion takeover of PetroKazakhstan and the $1.4 billion Ecuador oil field sale by North American producer EnCana.
Industry sources told Reuters earlier this month that CNPC--the parent company of Hong Kong and New York-listed PetroChina (0857.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) (PTR.N: Quote, Profile, Research)--and ONGC were forming a partnership for an overseas acquisition but they declined to reveal the target.
A CNPC spokesman was not immediately available for comment. ONGC Chairman Subir Raha declined to comment.
The source and analysts said Petro-Canada was selling the assets to reduce its political risk profile and to concentrate on other assets in which it has operating control.
Petro-Canada shares last traded at C$43.58 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
ONGC is bidding for a stake in a Nigerian offshore field with an estimated value of $1 billion, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters earlier this week.
The stake in the yet-to-be-developed Akpo field, operated by French oil company Total SA (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research), was put up for sale earlier this year by Nigerian firm South Atlantic Petroleum Ltd., which is controlled by former Nigerian Defense Minister Theophilus Danjuma, sources have said.

Speaking at the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference (BIREC), Chinese officials this week announced a bolstered commitment to renewable energy that includes a doubling of its current use of renewable energy to 15 percent of the country’s energy mix by the year 2020.
Environmentalists have characterized Beijing’s new renewable energy target as a good first step, according to the UK-based Guardian Unlimited newspaper, but it is “still not ambitious enough to offset the climatic damage caused by its spectacular economic growth, which will continue to be predominantly fuelled by coal.“ China’s new national renewable energy law comes into effect next year that sets tariffs in place to foster renewable energy use. Leading up to this proposal, the Chinese government had originally stated a goal of reaching 10 percent renewable energy use by 2020. This higher-level 15 percent commitment raises a renewable energy standard that had already been lauded around the world as a crucial step for a nation with limited and largely coal-based energy resources and a rapidly growing economy, solaraccess.com said.
According to China Daily, investments of up to 1.5 trillion yuan (USD$ 184 billion) will be made in order to reach this goal. China is already the world leader in the use of solar thermal hot water systems and these new commitments could make it a major player with the other renewable energy technologies like solar photovoltaics, wind power, and biofuels.
Zhang Guobao, vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, told China Daily that the business sector, instead of Government, will play a leading role in the investment and that international cooperation would be essential for China to meet its goals.
There will be many stand-alone and distributed-generation renewable energy opportunities as the government planned to specifically step up efforts to make renewable energy electricity available to the country’s approximately 30 million people who do not have access to grid electricity.
A 15 percent renewable energy commitment will mean a lot of renewable energy but the reality is that the bulk of this commitment will be in large hydropower.
According to reporting from the Reuters news agency, Zhang Guobao also said that hydropower-driven generators would generate 290 million kilowatts (kW) by that year, while biomass energy capacity would hit 20 million kW, wind 30 million kW and solar 2 million kW.
The UK-based Guardian Unlimited newspaper said environmentalists have characterized Beijing’s new renewable energy target as a good first step but “still not ambitious enough to offset the climatic damage caused by its spectacular economic growth, which will continue to be predominantly fuelled by coal.“
“Environmentalists concerned about the impact of dams, which are ruining some of the world’s most beautiful rivers, will be alarmed that hydropower is considered the main alternative to coal and oil,“ the Guardian article stated.
It’s little coincidence that GE Energy’s hydropower operations in Asia celebrated the grand opening just over a week ago of a new, 43,000 square-meter, flagship manufacturing, engineering and service center in Hangzhou, China. Company officials described it as a “critical platform“ in China and Asia for GE Energy.
Despite what may appear as a good first step effort, an inescapable reality for China is that the country’s ongoing commitment to renewables--whether largely through hydropower or not--will do little to lesson the country’s use of coal as the primary means for electrical production. The country currently uses coal for 70 percent of electricity in China and speakers at BIREC admitted that figure was not expected to change anytime soon.