June 2, 2020
The National Hurricane Center is advising businesses like oil, gas and electricity providers to watch the Gulf of Mexico closely as we near the weekend now that Tropical Storm Cristobal has formed…..
June 2, 2020
Texas-based HollyFrontier Corp. has plans to turn around a Wyoming refinery, reducing about 75% of its plant workforce along the way…..
June 2, 2020
CenterPoint Energy, Inc. and Energy Capital Partners, LLC have close on the sale of CenterPoint Energy Services (CES).….
June 2, 2020
El Paso Electric Co. has extended its purchase agreement with a division of J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc. as the two companies await approval from the FERC…..
June 1, 2020
American Electric Power has only to win approval of the Public Utility Commission of Texas to clear all regulatory hurdles to acquire all of the wind generation being constructed in Oklahoma, intended to serve four states including Texas……
June 1, 2020
Texas oil production tax income received in May reached its lowest monthly level since July 2010 in it’s steepest one-month drop since 1988…..
June 1, 2020
Former Quantum Energy Partners manager and TIPRO member David Bole has died….
May 30, 2020
The US electric power sector has surpassed the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan emissions reduction targets 11 years ahead of schedule, according to a new report by the Carbon Tax Center…..
May 30, 2020
Exxon Mobil Corp has restarted the large crude distillation unit at its 369,024 barrel-per-day Beaumont refinery….
May 27, 2020
The president and CEO of Texas Capital Bank NA has stepped down and a temporary successor, who has experience in oil and gas, has been named…..
May 27, 2020
Texas Oil & Gas Association (TXOGA) President Todd Staples recently joined Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush at Lamar University in Beaumont to discuss how oil and natural gas in Texas are fueling education.
“The Texas General Land Office has long played a key role in funding education across Texas, with the oil and natural gas industry being a strong partner of this mission,” said Bush. “The dollars that this industry pumps into education in Texas are helping provide the learning opportunities that are vital to our state’s efforts to better prepare the next generation of innovators and leaders.”….
May 27, 2020
A new environmental report places San Antonio in 5th place nationally — and first in Texas — in solar energy capacity….
By Alex Mills
May 27, 2020
Crude oil prices have firmed up from its crash one month ago, but the industry’s reduction in capital expenditures and decline in future drilling will negatively impact its ability to replace current production in the future.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas issued a report this week stating: “We expect at least a 35 percent drop in such investment (U.S. oil and gas producers) between the first and second quarters of 2020 in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, which will reduce nonresidential business fixed investment by 6 percentage points alone.”
A big portion of the capital expenditures (capex) by industry includes drilling and completion costs. The U.S. drilling rig count declined this week to historic low of 339 compared to 985 last year, which is a decline of 688 active drilling rigs (70 percent), according to the Baker Hughes Rig Count. In Texas, the rig count declined 332 from 482 a year ago to 150 currently (69 percent)…..
May 27, 2020
Electricity use in the ERCOT was down between three and four percent last week, when compared to the agency’s expected use….
May 26, 2020
A group of independent energy brokers and consultants say they’re launching an education effort that will help “fully implement” requirements mandated last year by the Texas Legislature….
May 26, 2020
Baylor Scott & White Health announced today a $100,000 donation from Reliant in support of its MyBSWHealth mobile app. Launched in 2018, the MyBSWHealth app has emerged as a leading digital tool in Texas in the fight against COVID-19, providing nearly 175,000 digital screenings and more than 45,000 eVisits related to the virus. This process has allowed tens of thousands of Texans with mild symptoms to be evaluated outside of Baylor Scott & White clinics and emergency departments—further ensuring that hospitals are ready for those who need care most during this time….
May 25, 2020
The synergy of a more efficient grid and the costs of new infrastructure are actually resulting in Xcel Energy electricity bills that are lower now than they were in 2017, the company said on Friday…..
May 24, 2020
Houston’s Noble Energy says production stopped last week at Israel’s offshore Leviathan natural gas field after an “operational event,” just as an Israeli government agency was opening proceedings against Noble, claiming the company violated terms of its emissions permit….
May 23, 2020
A puncture in a South Texas water line made by a natural gas pipeline crew appears to be minor…..
May 24, 2020
In search of an affordable post-market use for used electric vehicle batteries, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found what they say is a model for re-purposing at solar power installations.
At MIT’s Photovoltaics Research Laboratory, the researchers looked at a hypotheitical grid-scale solar farm in California, where they studied the economic feasibility of using an array of batteries from electric vehicles that had declined in productivity to about 80% of original capacity, considered of no use in vehicles because they were too weak.
They also looks at the similar costs for building a 2.5-megawatt solar farm alone — and then the cost of building that same solar farm but with an added new lithium battery storage system…..