Energy Regulator News

Esgian's last roundup of the year for the Week 52 puts spotlight on new developments for Dolphin Drilling semisub, Seadrill drillships, as well as Shell’s plans for Australia and ONGC’s new tender for jackups in India.ContractsDolphin Drilling has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with an undisclosed operator for the 1,500-ft semisubmersible Borgland Dolphin to undertake a 500-day drilling campaign in the UK. The drilling campaign is planned to begin directly after the firm part of the contract period with EnQuest, which was announced in late November 2023.

Germany cannot be relaxed about the need for liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the Baltic Sea, a high-ranking economy ministry official said on Monday, a week after plans emerged to scale down the region's Mukran project after local resistance. "We should not be relaxed about supply security in the next winter," said Stefan Wenzel, a parliamentary state secretary in the ministry led by Robert Habeck of the Green Party. "We cannot afford to be unprotected and we also have…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving too slowly to allow states to permit and oversee carbon-reduction projects, according to Louisiana's governor, slowing millions of dollars in investments designed to tackle greenhouse gas reduction.Louisiana and other top oil-producing states say they can speed up permitting of carbon sequestration projects if allowed to handle decisions that currently fall under the EPA. There are dozens of these projects with multi-million…

The suspension of the approval process for the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline by a German regulator could be short-lived as Europe is hungry for more gas, an analyst said on Monday after meeting officials of Russian state gas giant Gazprom.Last week, Germany's energy regulator temporarily halted the certification process for the new pipeline that will carry Russian gas into Europe, throwing up a new roadblock to the contentious project and driving up regional gas prices.German…

Germany's energy regulator has temporarily halted the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, requiring the Swiss-based, Gazprom-led consortium behind the infrastructure to form a German subsidiary to secure a licence.Following are some of the legal considerations associated with the move by Germany's Federal Network Agency, which aims to strengthen its oversight of the project in Germany.The list is partly based on information provided by specialist energy law firm Rosin Buedenbender in Essen…

A German regulator's decision to suspend licensing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could delay commissioning of the infrastructure to March 2022, government sources told Reuters."I expect that the start of Nord Stream 2 could be delayed until March 2022," a government source said on Wednesday.The source cited the need for Russia's Gazprom to create a limited liability company under German law, adding that Gazprom had flagged it would start doing so.Tuesday's move https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german…

Russia's Energy Ministry is due to prepare a report in the coming days about the possibility of Rosneft exporting natural gas to Europe via the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Interfax cited Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak as saying on Wednesday.Currently, Kremlin-controlled Gazprom has exclusive rights for Russian pipeline gas exports.Novak said this month that Rosneft had asked the government for permission to export natural gas and the government was reviewing the request.The…

Gazprom said on Friday it had finished construction of the Nord Stream 2 subsea pipeline to Germany, completing Moscow's project to increase its gas export capability and bypass Ukraine, but flows have yet to be cleared by regulators.The much-politicized pipeline will double Russia's gas exporting capacity to Europe via the Baltic Sea and will allow Moscow to circumvent its political foe Ukraine as a major route for its lucrative gas exports to Europe."The head of the management board…

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Thursday that authorities would build houses for the relatives of the crew of a submarine that went missing before being found in pieces on the bottom of the Bali Sea, killing all 53 inside.The German-built KRI Nanggala-402 was discovered at a depth of nearly 840 meters (2,756 ft) on Sunday after losing contact days earlier while preparing for a torpedo drill."We will build houses for you...

Russia has resumed construction of the politically-charged Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, laying pipes after a one-year hiatus prompted by U.S. sanctions, the pipeline operator said on Friday.An alleged nerve agent attack on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in August was the latest political controversy to hit the nearly-completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, as Germany debates whether to halt the project as part of potential sanctions against Russia.Led by Russia's Gazprom with Western partners…

A Russian pipe-laying vessel Academic Cherskiy which Moscow can use to finish laying pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas project, has moored near the German logistics hub in Mukran, Refinitiv Eikon tracking data showed on Monday.Led by the state gas company Gazprom, Nord Stream 2 had to suspend pipelaying works late last year, hit by fresh U.S. sanctions. The project is aimed at doubling existing undersea flows to Germany to 110 billion cubic meters per year.Cherskiy, bought by Gazprom in 2016, has sailed from the Russian Pacific port of Nakhodka where it was docked in December when the U.S. sanctions put the plan to finish the remaining 160-km stretch near the Danish island of Bornholm on hold…

UK energy regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), has selected Diamond Transmission Partners as the preferred bidder for the offshore transmission of the 1200MW Hornsea Project One wind farm in the UK.Diamond Transmission Partners  is a consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and Chubu Electric Power. Hornsea One is an offshore wind farm is in 120km off the Yorkshire Coast. The project was commissioned in January when it became the world’s largest offshore wind farm.Diamond Transmission Partners has to establish the necessary arrangements to provide offshore transmission services for the wind farm, including having all relevant contractual…

Energy regulator Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) has been "unable to approve" plans for two huge subsea cables to take energy from the Scottish islands to the mainland.The transmission links from Shetland and the Western Isles were proposed by Scottish and Southern Energy Networks (SSEN) to connect planned new wind farms on the islands to the national grid.In March 2019 Ofgem said it was minded to approve the estimated £709 million link.The proposal from SSEN for a 600MW transmission link was based on the largest planned project, Viking Energy Wind Farm, securing subsidies through the UK Government’s Autumn Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction.The award of these subsidies would have provided confidence that the wind farm is likely to progress…

Firefighters on Wednesday extinguished a fire at a Mitsui & Co petrochemical storage site outside Houston that has been billowing acrid smoke for days, the company said.The blaze at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co in Deer Park, Texas, was put out by 3 a.m., but fire crews continued to spray foam and water on the tanks to help keep them cool and prevent the fires from starting again, the company said in a statement.No serious injuries were reported, it said. Fire officials…

Oil service and mapping firms still emerging from an industry recession have received a boost from about $800 million of data sales to energy firms considering bidding for Mexican oil and gas blocks. Mexico will on Wednesday hold its most important auction since a 2013 reform ended the 75-year monopoly on the energy sector held by state-run oil firm Pemex. The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto hopes the deepwater sale will attract tens of billions of dollars of investment to turnaround a slump in the country's oil output. Seven previous auctions drew investment pledges of $61 billion.

Strong demand is tightening the market but rising US output could sap efforts to rebalance market. The amount of oil stored on tankers around Singapore has dropped sharply in the last months, the latest indication that OPEC-led supply cuts are successfully tightening crude markets even as U.S. exports have soared. Shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon shows around 15 super-tankers are currently filled with oil in waters off Singapore and western Malaysia, storing around 30 million barrels of crude. That is half the number of ships in June and down from 40 tankers holding surplus fuel in mid-2017. The drop in floating storage around…

BG Group and Energy Transfer Partners have gained approval from the U.S. energy regulator for their liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the companies said. The go-ahead is a key milestone for the project, one of an array of planned U.S. LNG export plants set to bring shale gas to gas-hungry consumers across the globe. The partners said they would take a final investment decision on the project, expected to export around 15 million metric tonnes of LNG a year, in 2016 and that first LNG exports from the plant could follow four years after construction starts. "Lake Charles LNG has the potential to create several thousand jobs during construction and if fully operational could result in approximately 250 long-term operational positions…

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed his natural resources minister to "modernize" Canada's independent pipeline regulator, said a letter released on Friday that gave details on the newly elected leader's environmental plans. Trudeau asked Natural Resources Minister James Carr to ensure the Calgary-based National Energy Board (NEB) has a balanced representation from across the country, as well as sufficient expertise in environmental science, community development and indigenous traditional knowledge. The Liberal prime minister on Friday published all of the mandate letters sent to his cabinet ministers, which instructed several of them to restore environmental legislation that was changed by the previous Conservative government.

The operator of Canada's largest synthetic crude project said on Saturday it is investigating the causes of an early morning fire at an upgrading plant. Firefighters extinguished the blaze, at Syncrude Canada's Mildred Lake upgrading complex in northern Alberta, and no one was injured, said company spokesman Will Gibson in a phone interview. The fire broke out a few hours after the province's energy regulator announced it was shutting in 95 pipelines operated by Nexen, one of the partners in the project, because of safety issues identified following a large oil-related spill in July. But he said it was too soon to know how production would be affected.

Alberta's energy regulator said on Saturday it is investigating reports that about 30 blue herons have died at a Syncrude Canada oil sands mine site in the northern part of the Canadian province. The Alberta Energy Regulator said it sent investigators to the Syncrude Canada Mildred Lake site, which is about 40 km (25 miles) north of Fort McMurray. In 2010, Syncrude was fined C$3 million ($2.29 million) for negligence in the 2008 deaths of 1,600 ducks in a toxic waste pond, a case that fueled international concern about the environmental impact of developing Canada's oil sands. Syncrude's partners include Canadian Oil Sands Ltd, Imperial Oil Ltd, Suncor Energy Inc, Sinopec , CNOOC Ltd's Nexen, Japan's Mocal Energy and Murphy Oil Co.

Mexico has approved the terms for five shallow water areas containing around 355 million barrels of oil equivalent as part of its Round One tender to open up the country's oil fields, the country's energy regulator said on Friday.   The whole of Round One covers areas including the Chicontepec basin and the Perdido area, as well as shallow and deep waters, and sees investment of up to $50.5 billion between 2015 and 2018, the energy regualtor said in November.     (Reporting by Adriana Barrera, Ana Isabel Martinez, Christine Murray and Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Simon Gardner)

Cenovus Energy Inc , Canada's No.2 independent oil producer, said on Friday it has received regulatory approval for its Telephone Lake oil sands project, a facility that could eventually produce more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day. The company said the Alberta Energy Regulator and the provincial government approved the thermal oil sands project, which will pump steam into oil sands deposits to liquefy the tar-like bitumen so it can flow to the surface. Cenovus said Telephone Lake will be developed in stages, with a 90,000 bpd initial phase, followed by expansions. However, it will not make a final decision on whether to proceed with construction until next year.

Canada's Quebec province could start exporting crude from oil sands and also liquefied natural gas to Asia and Europe from 2017-2018, as buyers search for alternative suppliers to Russia, Quebec's energy minister said. The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has increased Europe's quest for alternative suppliers of oil and gas and Canada's exports to Europe have already started to pick up in the last few months. In September, oil sands giant Suncor exported its first-ever cargo of Western Canadian crude to Europe…