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The Louisiana Oil & Gas Association will hold the 2011 Gulf Coast Prospect & Shale Expo at the Cajundome Convention Center in Lafayette on October 18. “This event creates a one-day dynamic marketplace for the buying and selling of oil and gas prospects while highlighting all aspects of conventional and non-conventional exploration. The GCPSE provides an unmatched opportunity for industry networking and allows a venue for companies and individuals to market gulf coast and other regional prospects,” LOGA Communications Director Matt Ross said.

The keynote speaker is the New York Times best selling author and political commentator, Ann Coulter. Coulter is the legal correspondent for Human Events and writes a popular syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate.

She is a frequent guest on many TV shows, including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Hannity, The O’Reilly Factor, The Glenn Beck Show, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and has been profiled in numerous publications, including TV Guide, the Guardian (UK), the New York Observer, National Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle magazine. Registration as an exhibitor, viewer or sponsor includes a seat at the keynote luncheon.

A limited number of individual seats and reserved tables will be made available for the keynote luncheon only and will be offered on a first come, first served basis.

Register online today at http://register.loga.la/

Please contact Ben Broussard at (337) 278-6240 or ben@loga.la for more information concerning exhibiting, sponsorship & other questions.

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By Cheryl Kaften

TMCnet Contributor

Carbon Sciences Inc., the developer of a breakthrough technology to make gasoline and other transportation fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide, announced on September 21 that recent plans for a major project in Louisiana “confirm that a gas-to-liquids (GTL (News – Alert)) strategy is [America’s] best approach for energy independence.”

Johannesburg, South African energy and chemicals group Sasol said earlier this month that it has chosen the southwestern region of the State of Louisiana as the site for the first-ever U.S. plant to produce GTL transportation fuels and other products.

Sasol Managing Director of New Business Development Ernst Oberholster commented, “We believe Sasol’s proprietary GTL technology can help unlock the potential of Louisiana’s clean and abundant natural gas resources and contribute to an affordable, reliable, and high-quality fuel supply for the United States.”

Sasol will embark on a feasibility study to evaluate the viability of a GTL venture in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, over the next 18 months. The feasibility study will consider two options: a facility that produces two million tons per annum or a facility that produces four million tons per annum.

Although found in abundant supply at affordable prices in the United States and worldwide, natural gas cannot be used directly in cars, trucks, trains, and planes without a massive overhaul of the existing transportation infrastructure. Innovating at the forefront of chemical engineering, Santa Barbara, California-based Carbon Sciences is developing a highly scalable, clean-tech process to transform natural gas into liquid transportation fuels— such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The key to this cost-effective process is a proprietary methane dry-reforming catalyst that consumes carbon dioxide.

Carbon Sciences CEO Byron Elton commented, “It is clear that using abundant, domestic natural gas as the feedstock for transportation fuels is an affordable and environmentally responsible way to advance energy security and stimulate economic growth. The main challenge in using this readily available resource is that natural gas cannot be pumped directly into our existing vehicles. However, with GTL technology, America’s vast reserves of natural gas can be converted into liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, which can be used directly in our cars, ships and planes. We believe that the proposed GTL facility in Louisiana is a step in the right direction for the United States and the world.”

“GTL fuels are an important part of the energy mix because they can advance energy independence in a way that is both cost-efficient and environmentally friendly,” said Sasol’s Oberholster. In addition, unlike other proposed alternatives to conventional petroleum-based fuels, GTL fuel is used in existing vehicles and fuel delivery infrastructure without modifications.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said, “Without question, the Haynesville Shale and other unconventional natural gas plays are transforming the energy economy in the United States. LSU’s new economic impact study – commissioned by Sasol – reveals that the complex’s construction, alone, will generate another $1.73 billion in additional business activity, and over 12,000 new jobs associated with $577 million in personal earnings during the five-year construction period. Once fully operational, the facility would lead to more economic activity in the state to the tune of nearly $919 million a year.”

The Haynesville Shale is an informal, popular name for a rock formation – about 9,000 square miles in size, and 200 feet to 300 feet thick – that lies beneath large parts of southwestern Arkansas, northwest Louisiana, and East Texas at depths of 10,500 feet  to 13,000 feet below the land’s surface. It contains vast quantities of recoverable natural gas. This natural gas is known as “shale gas,” because the wells produce from low permeability mudstones that are also the source for the natural gas.

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by Chris Redford

DESOTO PARISH, La — The fitter the deputy, the safer the parish. That’s what Desoto Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle says citizens can expect with the department’s new training center.

The million dollar facility consists of a fully equipped gym, a hi-tech conference room and an interactive use of force simulator.

“It gives different scenes and it allows the officer to react to each of those scenes,” said Sgt. Dusty Herring.

The training center which was paid for by increase sales revenue thanks to the Haynesville Shale not only benefits employees, it benefits residents.

“It allows them to see where their money is going. It allows deputies who are protecting and serving them to be better trained and better physically capable of doing the job they need to do,” said Herring.

Sheriff Arbuckle says employees are offered fitness incentives for staying healthy and hopes the center will lower the cost of insurance premiums.

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By Gregory Meyer in New York
Financial Times

The shale gas boom that has transformed the fortunes of energy companies is also giving US manufacturing a shot in the arm.

The price of natural gas in the US has been cut in half from three years ago after new drilling techniques uncorked extra output. In Asia, where markets are pegged to oil prices, gas costs three times more.

The supply trend has begun to reverse the fortunes of energy-hungry US industries. Factories mothballed as prices broke records in the past decade have begun to reopen and some manufacturers are breaking ground on new plants.

Dow Chemical plans to open new US ethylene and propylene plants later this decade, and restart a Louisiana ethylene cracker closed in 2009. Royal Dutch Shell announced a chemical plant in the gas-rich Appalachian mountain region to make ethylene and petrochemicals. Sasol of South Africa last week unveiled a plan to convert gas into diesel fuel in Louisiana.

In the fertiliser industry, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan is investing $158m to restart a Louisiana anhydrous ammonia plant shut in 2003, when gas prices were climbing. Aluminium company Ormet is dusting off a nearby plant shuttered in 2006.

“When the price of gas comes down, it certainly ripples through our economy,” says Mike Eades, president of the economic development corporation in Ascension parish, near the PotashCorp and Ormet facilities in Louisiana.

The investments come as the US gas market faces regulatory challenges. Extracting gas from shale rocks involves injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressures thousands of feet underground, raising concerns it will pollute drinking water. Some states have imposed moratoria or restrictions on the technology, while the Environmental Protection Agency is studying potential impacts. A government advisory panel last month urged disclosure of what is in fracturing fluid.

The US government has also authorised the first major exports of liquefied US gas, potentially narrowing the gap between cheap domestic and foreign markets. When the first project won preliminary approval in May, an industrial energy consumers’ association objected, saying: “Natural gas is not like other exported products such as manufactured goods.”

Cheap gas is no panacea for high US unemployment. Manufacturers employ 9 per cent of the non-farm workforce, and chemicals manufacturing employs only 0.6 per cent, or 781,000 people.

The new gas economics are favourable for industries that use a lot of it. Gas is the main input for nitrogen fertiliser, such as urea. North America shut down half its nitrogen production capacity early in the last decade, and imports now satisfy half its demand.

Stephen Wilson, chief executive of fertiliser producer CF Industries, says: “For the first time in decades, American manufacturers of nitrogen fertiliser and other energy-intensive products are in a position to contemplate building new plants and hiring new employees if the regulatory environment accommodates it.”

Gas is also a key petrochemical feedstock. “It’s probably the single greatest factor for the US petrochemical industry in terms of our competitiveness internationally,” says Cal Dooley, chief executive of the American Chemistry Council.

The chemistry council, an industry group, says trends in US thermoplastics exports show a strong correlation with the ratio of oil and gas prices. Outside the US, many producers rely on naphtha, an oil derivative, to make basic chemicals. Companies able to use cheap natural gas liquids have gained an edge as oil trades at a historically high multiple to gas.

“Given the forecasts for US natural gas, on the back of abundant shale gas reserves, we feel that gas-based feedstocks will be advantaged over oil-based feedstocks in North America for the foreseeable future,” a Dow spokesman says.

New supplies have kept US gas in a narrow trading range between about $4 and $5 per m British thermal units. But the fuel’s history of volatility may give companies cold feet.

Nucor, a steelmaker building a $750m factory to convert gas and iron ore pellets into iron in Louisiana, has a novel approach. The company has an agreement with an energy driller whose production will be sold to offset the factory’s gas price risks.

“You better have a long-term supply of low-cost natural gas. We’ve been able to achieve that,” John Ferriola, Nucor president, told investors recently.

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By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune

Earlier this month, a flatbed truck lumbered slowly out of the gravel parking lot at R&D Enterprises in Harvey, bearing a huge red-and-yellow storage tank bound for an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Watching it leave, co-owner Leslie Bertucci raised her camera phone and snapped a couple of pictures of a cherished sight in the last few months: a paying customer.

For R&D, this was rain after a drought, a breath of oxygen flowing into a small oilfield supply company that has been gasping for air. The company, which rents modular storage containers and racks to offshore rigs, has managed to stay in business since the Deepwater Horizon exploded last year and radically reshaped deepwater drilling in the Gulf.

But it’s been grueling.

R&D survived a four-month deepwater drilling moratorium that ended in October. Since then, it has been struggling to navigate the re-made regulatory environment that has settled over the Gulf, leaving drilling activity far short of where it was when Deepwater Horizon blew, killing 11 workers.

Bertucci and her husband, Dan Ness, founded R&D 11 years ago in their house in Metairie to manufacture and rent specialized equipment to deepwater drillers. When the moratorium clanged down and the Gulf went quiet, Bertucci said revenue plunged 80 percent almost overnight.

The company survived, in part, by enforcing furious economies, Bertucci said.

The couple slashed their own salaries by 75 percent. Months later they eliminated them entirely, and then began shoveling personal savings into company operations.

Bertucci said they slashed every discretionary nickel, ended their practice of cookouts or gifts for customers, cut off all charitable contributions.

Remarkably, over the course of 18 months, R&D has held on to its small workforce of a dozen or so employees.

“We didn’t lay off anybody but ourselves,” she said.

‘Not a penny’

Meanwhile, Bertucci learned that R&D didn’t qualify for compensation from a $20 billion fund that BP established shortly after the spill.

Although the company had contracts in hand, it received no compensation for lost revenue, or for the estimated $144,000 in equipment that went to the bottom of the Gulf with the Deepwater Horizon.

“We haven’t received a penny. Not a penny,” she said.

However, since the spring, business has inched back up, “but it’s excruciating how slow it is.”

“I didn’t think a year and a half ago I’d be excited to have the numbers I have today,” she said. “They’re not great. But they’re creeping back up slowly.”

Bertucci said she and Ness are back on the payroll, but business is still down more than a third of what it was before the oil spill. The day of the BP disaster, Bertucci said her company had equipment on 23 deepwater rigs; today they’re on 12.

If her projections work out, Bertucci expects that next summer the business will be where it was in June of 2010.

Depressed deepwater drilling

On the day BP’s rig blew, 33 deepwater rigs were operating in the Gulf.

Today there are about 34, but only about half are drilling, said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane University Energy Institute. The rest are awaiting permits.

Just last week, a joint report by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement found that BP, Halliburton, its drilling contractor and Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon, took disastrous shortcuts that led to the blowout of the 18,000-foot Macondo well, killing 11 crew members and spilling nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Since the relaxation of a moratorium after the spill, Gulf deepwater drillers have been operating in a new environment in which regulators have ordered increased oversight at every stage of oil and gas development, and invited more government agencies to consult and comment on drilling permit applications, Smith said.

The result is that permit applications are significantly backlogged and deepwater drilling remains depressed.

Pleading their cases

In the months since the spill, Bertucci has become a highly visible spokesperson for thousands of small secondary businesses that support — and are supported by — the multi-billion-dollar corporate behemoths in the oil and gas industry.

Bertucci has pleaded the case of small businesses in Washington and before the president’s National Oil Spill Commission in New Orleans. She is the subject of a short pro-business video by the Heritage Foundation and the Institute for Energy Research.

Her message is clear: although the blowout was a disaster, the moratorium was an overreaction, and the post-moratorium regulatory environment has tilted the balance of oversight versus production too far in favor of oversight.

During the slowdown, Bertucci and Ness began looking to other markets for business. In the last few months, they have sought an international technical certification for their tanks and racks so they can bid on deepwater jobs in other regions — especially Brazil, which appears to be the preeminent new deepwater market.

During the darkest days of the moratorium, Bertucci frequently said the company needed to keep a full workforce on hand for the day the moratorium was lifted, for on that day, she believed, R&D would be swept off its feet with customers stampeding back into the Gulf.

It hasn’t worked out that way at all.

“It turned out to be sort of a joke. A joke on us,” she said.

“It was a very cruel joke.”

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