Page 39 - Oil & Energy - March 2013

March 2013 • 39
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NATURAL GAS EXPORT STUDY
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants
the Energy Department (DOE) to redo
a natural-gas export study to address
“shortcomings,” setting the stage for a
likely hearing on the matter, according to
a recent report by TheHill.com. Wyden,
who chairs the Senate Committee on
Energy and Natural Resources, said he is
concerned the DOE-commissioned report
by NERA Consulting failed to properly
assess market demand and exports’ impact
on natural-gas prices.
“Although the NERA study acknowl-
edges that some sectors of the economy will
be hurt by exports, the NERA study fails
to fully assess the impacts of rising natural
gas prices on homeowners and businesses,”
Wyden wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary
Steven Chu. The report concluded natu-
ral-gas exports would yield a net economic
benefit. It also said the economic activity
from exports would outweigh modest price
increases that concern some Democrats and
the manufacturing industry. But several
Democrats and the manufacturing industry
have urged caution on natural-gas exports
because of cost concerns. They contend
resulting price increases would harm
manufacturing, which has benefited from
cheap natural gas, and raise electricity rates
for homeowners.
GROUPS OPPOSE E15 SALES
Opposition to an emerging blend of
ethanol and gasoline has intensified in recent
weeks, with travel club AAA joining the oil
industry, automakers and some environmen-
talists to question the federal government’s
aggressive support for the fuel, according to
a recent report on FuelFix.com.
While federal agencies insist that the
E15 blend of gasoline containing 15 percent
ethanol is safe for vehicles made since 2001,
the auto club and others contend it can
cause damage to engines not designed to
burn it, the report states. Those automotive
interests, along with food producers, have
mounted a legal challenge to higher ethanol
requirements, but they suffered a setback in
January when a federal appeals court upheld
a lower-court ruling that the groups did not
show how E15 would harm them.
But AAA last month called for suspen-
sion of E15’s sale, which the EPA approved
in 2010. The auto club said that a recent
study, backed by oil companies and the
auto industry, showed that E15 could cause
engine failure and damage in vehicles not
specifically designed to handle the fuel.
COURT VACATES 2012
CELLULOSIC BIOFUEL STANDARD
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit recently upheld
the advanced biofuels requirements under
the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) while
ordering the EPA to reset the cellulosic bio-
fuels target, according to a report by Biofuels
Digest. “We agree with [the American
Petroleum Institute (API)] that because
EPA’s methodology for making its cellulosic
biofuel projection did not take neutral aim at
accuracy, it was an unreasonable exercise of
agency discretion,” the court wrote.
There are 32 companies that are building
or have built cellulosic ethanol facilities
in the U.S., and those companies expect
to have at least 308 million gallons of cel-
lulosic capacity by the end of 2015. The
court rejected API’s argument that EPA was
not entitled to consider information from
cellulosic biofuel producers in setting its
projection, finding that cellulosic producers
were, of course, an “almost inevitable source
of information” for EPA. Nonetheless, the
court vacated the cellulosic biofuel standard
because it believed that EPA had impermis-
sibly set the volume with the objective of
promoting growth in the industry, rather
than simply making an accurate prediction.
LAB COULD UNLOCK POTENTIAL
OF SEABED METHANE ICE
The University of California, Irvine has
been granted $1 million to develop a labora-
tory for the research of energy obtained from
methane hydrates, an as-yet untapped source
of methane gas that exists in huge quantities
in some ocean-floor environments, according
to a report by Ars Technica.
Methane hydrates are clathrate com-
pounds, where the methane molecules are
trapped in a lattice of water ice – hence
their alternate names, methane clathrate
and methane ice. They occur where
methane and water are present at favorable
combinations of low temperatures and high
pressure. According to the Department of
Energy, methane hydrates are Earth’s largest
untapped fossil fuel resource – and might be
more plentiful than natural gas.