And the next Solyndra is . . . Beacon Power

By Katie Fehrenbacher

Flywheel maker Beacon Power declared bankruptcy on Sunday, first reported by Reuters, after winning a $43 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in the Summer of 2009. This is the second company to declare bankruptcy that had a loan guarantee from the DOE program, following solar maker Solyndra’s bankruptcy about two months ago.

Beacon Power makes flywheels, which are energy storage devices in the form of large spinning discs contained in a vacuum that keep electricity flowing over the power grid at a steady frequency. The technology has struggled to reach a mainstream market, but the idea is that flywheels can help stabilize the grid, allow it to run more efficiently, need little maintenance over their 20-year-plus life span, and don’t have some of the toxic chemicals found in many batteries. Flywheels are most commonly used as backup power for emergency power systems — what’s called uninterrupted power supply, or UPS — and facilities like data centers sometimes use them for when grid power is halted.

Beacon Power received the $43 million loan guarantee to help build a 20 MW flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, NY — the first full-scale commercial deployment of the company’s technology. The Stephentown energy storage plant was built to absorb and discharge energy to the electric grid, making it possible to use more variable renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

Reuters reports that Beacon drew down on $39 million of the loan for the Stephentown plant, and reports that the plant is still operating. And unlike in the case of Solyndra, where private investors are set to get paid back a portion of the funds first (before the government), Beacon Power will be paying back the government first, says Reuters.

Flywheel technology has struggled for years, and Beacon, in particular has continued to face problems. In late 2008, Beacon said it was delaying  expansion of its commercial project, and back in 2006 the company faced technology malfunctions. Flywheels have had difficulty finding the right market and have faced competition from batteries, which have received a good amount of funding and support.

Earlier this month Beacon Power received a notice for potential delisting from the Nasdaq for trading under $1. Reuters reports that Beacon has $72 million in assets and $47 million in debt, and that Beacon blamed its bankruptcy partly “on its inability to secure additional investments due to the financing terms mandated by the Department of Energy.”

No doubt, House Energy Commerce Committee Republicans, and right-leaning media will have a field day with the bankruptcy of Beacon Power. Already, electric car maker Fisker has been deemed the next Solyndra. But turns out Beacon Power is actually the next Solyndra.

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CNOOC Boasts High Shale Production in US Partnerships

China’s largest offshore oil producer, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), said unconventional oil and gas production in its United States partnerships totaled 3 million to 4 million barrels this year.

“We expect annual production to hit 8 million barrels as we put more capital into the wells,” said Zhu Weilin, executive vice-president of CNOOC Ltd.

China is estimated to hold more natural gas trapped in shale than the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration in April. Shale gas is among the largest onshore energy prospects in China.

CNOOC paid $570 million for a 33.3-percent stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp’s Niobrara shale project in Colorado and Wyoming in February this year. Last November, the company made a $1.8-billion purchase for a one-third stake in Chesapeake’s Eagle Ford project in south Texas.

He said his company is looking for opportunities with US companies in deepwater exploration as well as shale gas and oil.
“CNOOC has 19 offshore blocks in China that we are looking for foreign partners to co-develop,” said Zhu at the recent China-US Relations Conference.

“We see other small Chinese companies coming to the US for partnerships and supply agreements in unconventional oil and gas fields,” said Christine Ehlig-Economides, professor of the Petroleum Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. “This is one area they want to learn from.”

Industry analysts said China is paying a high premium for the partnerships while others have said Chinese is learning new exploration techniques through the projects.

The prices China’s State-owned oil companies have paid for assets are mixed; in some cases, they may have paid above market value but recent economic conditions, good financial performances, and growing experience with international deals have benefited the companies, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.

Two-thirds of the USD 70 billion invested in 144 projects overseas by China’s three oil giants, Sinopec Group, China National Petroleum Corp and CNOOC, have not turned a profit thus far, according to a recent report by the China University of Petroleum and the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association.

“Natural resources are one of the few sectors where the US government has stringent scrutiny because they are the strategic industries,” said Huang Yasheng, professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2005, CNOOC dropped its USD 18.5-billion bid for Unocal Corp because of opposition from US lawmakers.

It would have been the largest overseas acquisition by a Chinese company.

“Chinese companies should position themselves globally, rather than nationally,” said Xiang Bing, founding dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, one of China’s leading business schools.

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Magnolia Petroleum Company

The Magnolia Petroleum Company, founded as an unincorporated joint-stock association on April 24, 1911, was a consolidation of several earlier companies, the first of which, the J. S. Cullinan Company, began operating a refinery at Corsicana, Texas, on December 25, 1898. The Corsicana Petroleum Company, planned as a crude-oil producer for the Cullinan plant, was organized in 1899. The George A. Burts Refining Company, organized in 1901 to absorb much of the crude oil from the Spindletop oilfield, became the Security Oil Company. In 1909 both the Navarro Refining Company, successor to the Cullinan Company, and the Security Oil Company were purchased by the John Sealy Company, which in 1911 became the Magnolia Petroleum Company, with Sealy as president (see SEALY, JOHN HUTCHINGS).

The Magnolia Company was originally capitalized at $2,450,000–24,500 shares at $100 each. In 1925 the company purchased the Corsicana Petroleum Company. Capitalization was $185 million in 1925. As Magnolia Petroleum Company became increasingly important in the southwestern states, the Standard Oil Company of New York began acquiring some of its stock. In December 1925 all of the Magnolia stock was exchanged for Standard Oil Company of New York stock, and the Texas properties were transferred to Magnolia Petroleum Company, chartered under Texas law on November 21, 1925, as a corporation to replace the former joint-stock association. The Magnolia Pipe Line Company was organized in November 1925, as a transporting subsidiary of the petroleum company. In 1931, when the Standard Oil Company of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company merged to form Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Magnolia became an affiliate of the new company.

In 1949 Magnolia had a capitalization of $125 million, all shares owned by Socony-Vacuum except for qualifying shares owned by members of Magnolia’s board of directors. Magnolia Pipe Line Company was capitalized at $16.5 million, its stock being owned by Magnolia Petroleum Company except for qualifying shares held by directors of the pipeline company. Gross fixed assets of the company on December 31, 1948, were nearly $700 million, including the assets of the pipeline company, which had 8,670 miles of pipeline extending into nine states. General offices were in Dallas in 1949, when the company had permits to do business in twenty states and had some 12,500 employees. The Magnolia Petroleum Company merged with Socony Mobil Oil Company on September 30, 1959. Its operations became part of Mobil Oil Company, which had been formed in March 1959 as an operating division of Socony Mobil, responsible for all operations except marine transportation in the United States and Canada. Magnolia Pipe Line Company was not absorbed into Mobil Oil Company but remained a common carrier affiliate of Socony Mobil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

John M. Duncan, An Eye-Opener: The Standard Oil-Magnolia Compromise: The Whole Cold Truth (San Antonio, 1915). History of Petroleum Engineering (Dallas: American Petroleum Institute, 1961).

J. L. Terrell and James A. Clark

Timeline of Texas History – Magnolia Petroleum Company

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Australia: Tap Oil Gets Several Enquiries for Zola Stake

Tap Oil Ltd. said Monday it will consider selling its 10% stake in the Zola gas discovery offshore Western Australia before any liquefied natural gas development occurs, and has already received several enquiries about its plans.

“Tap has recently received several enquiries from large overseas industry players about Tap’s plans for Zola,” the company said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

The Zola-1 exploration well in the WA-290-P permit area in the Carnavon Basin discovered a mean contingent resource of 378 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The block is operated by U.S. producer Apache Corp. .

The entire Zola structure–located south of the giant Gorgon gas field being developed by a Chevron Corp.-led consortium–contains a mean 2.33 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to a report by independent experts RPS Energy Services Pty Ltd.

“It is appropriate for a company of Tap’s size and funding capabilities to consider monetizing an asset like Zola prior to the incurrence of the large scale LNG development costs which are likely required to bring the asset into production in a timeframe of at least five years,” Tap said.

Tap, which has a market value of A$170 million, said it is “confident that it can maximize the value of Zola by monetizing the asset on attractive terms at the right time.”

(businessweek)

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Santos: Only Way to Meet Eastern Australia Gas Demand is Allow CSG

The only way to meet a tripling in natural gas demand in eastern Australia is by allowing unconventional gas projects, including CSG, Santos says.

The oil and gas company’s eastern Australia vice president James Baulderstone told a conference that he expected gas prices to more than double within two decades, driven by demand and linking it to oil prices.

Soaring global demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is expected to contribute to Australia’s wealth and make it one of the world’s biggest exporters of the commodity.

However the use of fracking to access coal seam gas (CSG) or shale gas is strongly opposed by many Australians and Americans, including farmers, who say it contaminates prime agricultural land.

Santos insists that is false and gas is a safe, low-carbon alternative to coal for providing energy, with eastern Australia potentially having enough gas to supply it for a century.

“The five LNG trains already sanctioned, with more planned, represent a quantum change in eastern Australian natural gas demand,” Mr Baulderstone told the Opportunities and Challenges for Australian Gas conference on Monday.

“Provided natural gas development activity is allowed to proceed at the right pace, and the market is willing to pay the increased cost of extraction, there is sufficient gas in Eastern Australia to meet this demand.”

But he added that it was not viable to develop much of the gas reserves to meet the new demand at current Australian gas prices of about $4 a gigajoule.

Australian gas prices were some of the cheapest in the developed world, Mr Baulderstone said.

“Comparatively modest price increases driven by this anticipated stronger demand will make the development of extensive additional resources economic for the first time.”

Domestic users would be able to absorb such increases as gas prices had been flat for a decade and a rise was long overdue, he said.

He predicted prices would move to $6 to $9 a gigajoule.

“Industrial customers like Rio Tinto, BHP and Xstrata have benefited greatly over the past decade from basically flat east coast Australian gas prices while their commodity prices (iron ore, copper, silver, coal) have increased in some instances nearly ten fold during the same period,” Mr Baulderstone said.

Santos is heavily invested in CSG through the $US16 billion ($A15 billion) Gladstone Liquefied Natural Gas (GLNG) project it is leading and is also developing shale gas projects in the Cooper Basin in central Australia.

It is also close to finalizing a $924 million bid for NSW-based Eastern Star Gas, which controls NSW’s largest CSG resource.

“Even if the development of Santos’ CSG business in NSW was a third of the size of our Queensland project, $2 billion would be added to NSW state revenues and over 1,000 direct jobs would be created,” he said.

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A Grim Warning For The Global Economy..

by Joe Weisenthal

From the OECD (via Bloomberg), a prediction of mediocre growth and a call for “bold action.”

———————

Bold decisions are needed from the G20 leaders meeting in Cannes this week to get the global economy back on track, said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría.
An important first step has already been taken with the debt and banking crisis rescue plan announced by EU leaders on October 26 2011, but these measures must be implemented “promptly and forcefully”, he added.
Presenting a special Briefing Note ahead of the Cannes Summit, Mr Gurría said without decisive action the outlook is gloomy. The OECD projects GDP growth to remain weak in the advanced G20 economies over the next two years while the pace of activity in the major emerging markets is likely to be lower than in the pre-crisis period.

The near-term outlook

• Uncertainties regarding the short-term economic outlook have risen dramatically in recent months. A number of events, notably related to the euro area debt crisis and fiscal policy in the United States, are likely to dominate economic developments in the coming two years. In an “events-free” scenario and in the absence of comprehensive policy action to resolve current problems, real GDP is projected to grow by about 3.9% this year, 3.8% in 2012 and 4.6% in 2013 on average in G20 countries.1 This average masks a wide divergence among country groupings, and emerging-market economies are much more buoyant, despite some softening. In the euro area, a marked slowdown with patches of mild negative growth is likely. Growth is also projected to remain weak in the United States, with a gradual pick-up from 2012 towards the end of the projection period. Unemployment is set to remain high in many advanced countries.
• A better upside scenario can materialize if the policy measures that were announced at the Euro Summit of 26 October are implemented promptly and forcefully. These measures go in the right direction and could help restore confidence and create positive feed-back effects that could trigger a scenario of stronger growth.
• In contrast, the outlook would be gloomier if the commitments made by EU Leaders fail to restore confidence and a disorderly sovereign debt situation were to occur in the euro area with contagion to other countries, and/or if fiscal policy turned out to be excessively tight in the United States. OECD analysis suggests that a deterioration of financial conditions of the magnitude observed during the global crisis (between the latter half of 2007 and the first quarter of 2009) could lead to a drop in the level of GDP in some of the major OECD economies of up to 5% by the first half of 2013.
  Appropriate policy responses
• To resolve the euro area crisis, it is important to clarify and implement fully and decisively the measures announced on 26 October to break the link between sovereign debt and banking distress, to deal with Greece, to ensure that the sovereign debt crisis does not spread to other European countries and to secure appropriate capitalization and funding for banks. Detailed information is needed on how the package will be implemented.
• In the advanced G20 economies, interest rates should remain on hold or, where possible, be reduced; notably in the euro area. Central banks should continue to provide ample liquidity to ease financial market tensions. Further monetary relaxation, including through unconventional measures, would be warranted if downside risks intensify. In the emerging-market economies, the stance of monetary policy should be guided by the outlook for growth and inflation, which remains comparatively high.
• Strong, credible medium-term frameworks for fiscal consolidation and durable growth are needed to restore confidence in the longer-term sustainability of the public finances and to build budgetary space to deal with short-term economic weakness. Those advanced economies with sounder public finances can provide additional counter-cyclical support.
• Structural reforms are essential to boost the growth potential of G20 countries, to tackle high unemployment and to rebalance global demand. In view of weak growth in the near term and impaired fiscal positions in most advanced economies, priority should be given to reforms that offer comparatively strong short-term activity gains and facilitate longer-term fiscal consolidation.
• In Cannes, G20 leaders will discuss an Action Plan with bold commitments for mutually reinforcing macroeconomic policies and structural reforms. In 2008, G20 leaders rose to the challenge with a clear and coherent plan and we avoided a second Great Depression. Today, the adoption and implementation of the Action Plan is just as imperative to restore confidence through decisive actions in specific countries and regions.

The projections reported in the Briefing Note are preliminary and will be updated in the OECD Economic Outlook No. 90 to be released on 28 November 2011.

Source

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Gulf of Mexico: Vector Lands Cascade Chinook Field Job

Vector Technology Groups Subsea Division has been awarded a contract by Technip Houston for a Subsea Pig Launcher rated at 15,000 PSI. Vector Subsea Engineering have been working closely with Petrobras and Total to complete the design for Cascade Chinook Field in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This is just another example of Engineering strength” explains Chris Lee Vector’s Subsea Division Managing Director. “Our Engineering group has designed the launcher for a specific application for our client after a series of meetings to understand their issues” Delivery is planned for Q1 2012.

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Tullow Becomes Operator of New PSC Offshore Mauritania

Tullow Oil plc (Tullow) announces that new Production Sharing Contract (PSC) arrangements have been agreed with the Government of Mauritania and its Joint Venture partners. These arrangements will enable the Group to progress the appraisal and development of existing discoveries and pursue exploration in a new contract area covering 10,725 square kilometers with Tullow as operator.

The new arrangements, reached through transactions with partners and PSC awards from the Government, result in the exploration areas of the PSCs previously known as PSC-Area A and PSC-Area B being replaced by a new, single Exploration PSC called C-10. Tullow will operate this new PSC with a 59.15% interest. The existing Banda, Tevet and Tiof discoveries have been ring-fenced under their original PSC terms and extensions of up to 18 months have been granted to allow appraisal and development activities to be completed. Petronas will continue to operate Chinguetti Field on the basis of the original equities.

Tullow will now work closely with the Government of Mauritania and its Joint Venture partners on the near-term commercialization of the existing discoveries and the initiation of a high-impact exploration programme. The development of the Banda gas and Banda oil rim discoveries will be prioritized and it is expected that the results of initial development studies will be presented to the Government in early 2012. The high impact exploration programme is expected to include a minimum of two wells over the next three years.

Following the various agreements with partners and the Government of Mauritania, Tullow has significantly increased its equity position in the region.

As a result of this increase in activity in Mauritania, Tullow expects to significantly enhance its presence in Nouakchott, with a strong focus on the development of local staff and local content wherever possible. Furthermore, Tullow will be looking to award a number of bursaries to suitably qualified students from Mauritania.

Commenting today, Aidan Heavey, Chief Executive, said:

“We are delighted to have agreed new PSC arrangements offshore Mauritania. As Operator of the Banda, Tiof and Tevet discoveries, we will now work closely with the Government of Mauritania to commercialize these important hydrocarbon resources. We have also identified significant new exploration potential in this acreage and look forward to applying the knowledge and expertise of similar geological plays gained from our successful Equatorial Atlantic exploration campaigns in West Africa and South America. While we have worked in Mauritania for many years, this is essentially an exciting new beginning for Tullow as we increase our equity and take on the operatorship in these highly valuable and prospective licenses.”

Source

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