Barnett Shale

As world energy use grows, population to hit 7 billion

Although it receives only limited media attention, population growth is a major driver of spiraling global energy consumption. In the world's most-populous nations, such as China and India, millions of people are buying energy-consuming items ranging from cars to cookstoves to computers for the first time.

The world's 7-billionth person will be born Oct. 31 in India, according to a projection by researchers working with data from the United Nations.

Click here for the Bloomberg News report on the projected arrival of Earth human No. 7 billion.

--Jack Z. Smith

Gulf oil, gas production coming back on line

Oil and natural gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico continued to come back on line over the weekend as crews returned to offshore sites that had been evacuated as Tropical Storm Don came into the region.

Click here for the Houston Chronicle report.

--Jack Z. Smith

Conflict-of-interest questions raised as Ponder Town Council rejects drilling moratorium

Some members of the Town Council in the Denton County community of Ponder did not formally declare financial ties to Barnett Shale natural gas producer Devon Energy before denying a drilling moratorium, a move criticized by residents of Remington, the town's largest neighborhood, according to this Denton Record-Chronicle report.

--Jack Z. Smith

Gasoline appears stuck in high-priced groove

Just like the unrelenting 100-degree-plus temperatures that have hit North Texas, local retail gasoline appears to have hit a groove of unrelelentlngly high prices.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the Fort Worth-Arlington area is $3.65, unchanged from a week ago, according to a report today by auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

The $3.65 price is 23 cents higher than a month ago and $1.09 higher than a year ago, when the average was $2.56.

The current average Fort Worth-Arlington area prices for other fuel grades are: mid-grade, $3.81; premium, $3.94; and diesel, $3.86.

The all-time high local average price for regular was $3.98 on July 16, 2008, a year in which oil prices hit a record high of more than $147 a barrel. Gasoline is refined from crude oil, which accounts for a majority of the retail cost of the fuel.

--Jack Z. Smith

Champion of endangered desert tortoise strikes agreement on massive $2 billion solar project

Long before studies showed one of the world's largest solar energy farms could harm or kill more than 1,000 tortoises in the Mojave Desert, the threatened creature's longtime champion already had signed off on the massive California project.

Click here for the Associated Press report.

--Jack Z. Smith

O.K., Smart Guys: Fix the Energy Problem

Bloomberg Business Week magazine recently gathered together experts ranging from Dallas billionaire oilman/investor Boone Pickens to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner to brainstorm on how America should solve its energy problems. Among the participants was Bob Shapard, the CEO of Oncor Electric Delivery, the electric transmission and distribution company serving most of North Texas.

Click here to read what they had to say.

--Jack Z. Smith

Crow tribe hopes to tap huge coal cache

Montana’s Crow tribe and an Australian company have renewed their bid to tap into the reservation’s huge fossil- fuel reserves, with a scaled-down proposal for a coal-to-liquid fuels plant and the new pursuit of coal exports to Asia.

Click here for the Associated Press report.

--Jack Z. Smith 

Two workers die in Mexico refinery fire

Petroleos Mexicanos, Latin America’s largest oil producer, said today that two workers died and one was seriously injured in a fire at the Tula refinery today in the central state of Hidalgo, according to a Bloomberg News report.

The fire at the 315,000-barrel-a-day facility was reported this afternoon, said a press official who declined to be identified, citing company policy. He said two workers died, and one was injured.

The spokesman said the fire is under control and output wasn’t affected. Further details weren’t immediately available.

Separately, the company said earlier today a fire at its Salina Cruz refinery in Oaxaca forced the closing one of the plant’s catalytic units.

Federico Gonzalez, a spokesman for the refinery, said the fire was immediately contained. The 330,000-barrel-a-day Salina Cruz refinery is the country’s largest.

 --Jack Z. Smith

Lawsuit filed against NRC over aborted Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada

A new lawsuit contends the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is breaking the law by failing to act on an application for construction of a nuclear waste dump at the Yucca Mountain site outside Las Vegas, according to this Associated Press report appearing in the Houston Chronicle.

--Jack Z. Smith

GE, Wyoming ditch plans for clean-coal plant

General Electric and the University of Wyoming have suspended plans for a $100 million clean coal research facility near Cheyenne amid uncertainty in the nation’s energy policy, according to an Associated Press report.

GE said Friday that lower natural gas prices and low power demand in the weak economy also played roles in shelving the project, which had reached the bidding phase.

Construction of the High Plains Gasification-Advanced Technology Center was expected to begin this year and finish in late 2012. The plant would have been a test site for turning coal into gas, which burns more cleanly than coal.

Gov. Matt Mead called the decision disappointing but not surprising. He says the lack of a national energy policy has strangled energy development.

Wyoming and GE were to split the project’s cost.

--Jack Z. Smith