North America

U.S. Natural Gas Producers and Investment Firms are preparing for increased activity in Louisiana's Haynesville Shale Basin, positioning themselves to take advantage of a boom in the exports of liquefied gas boosted by President Donald Trump's new approvals. As the United States, the world's biggest LNG exporter, brings new projects to Texas and Louisiana, gas prices will rise. The U.S. is expected to reach record levels of gas demand in 2025 and 26. After Trump lifted a moratorium in his first days in office, energy companies are now planning and building large-scale LNG projects. This will increase the demand for...

According to sources familiar with the situation, Excelerate Energy, a provider of liquefied natural gas infrastructures is close to completing a deal for the Jamaican business of its smaller rival New Fortress Energy. The price will be around $1.1 billion. Sources who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss their private discussions said that if the negotiations are successful, a deal could be announced by Thursday. Excelerate expects the all-cash transaction to increase its global footprint. Its LNG infrastructure is currently deployed in Bangladesh, Brazil and Finland, among other countries. New Fortress will also be able to address its...

Gulf South Pipeline Company announced on Monday that it had stopped supplying natural gas to Freeport LNG in Texas following a lightning strike. Gulf South said that the lightning strike led to a declaration of force majeure for the line, effective immediately. It added that it was working to restore service to its customers as soon as possible. According to LSEG, the incident has reduced gas consumption at Freeport LNG, which can process 2.4 billion cubic foot of gas each day, to 450 millions cubic feet per daily (mcfd), from an earlier expectation of nearly 1.8 bcfd. Freeport requires 700...

NextDecade, an energy company, announced on Tuesday that U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia revised its August 2024 judgement against the order of the energy regulator allowing construction of NextDecade's LNG project. The flagship NextDecade facility has been under development for several decades and has already experienced multiple delays. The revised court order sends back the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order concerning the first five liquefaction train at the Rio Grande facility for further review. However, the order itself is still in effect. "We are happy with the revised court judgement today, which ensures that construction at the Rio...

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said to a room full of energy executives that he wanted their industries, which include mining and drilling on America's Public Lands, to increase the amount of these activities. He told them: "We love YOU! ". Burgum's remarks at the CERAWeek conference in Houston highlighted President Donald Trump’s agenda of reducing red tape to free up fossil fuels and metals. He told the crowd, "If we are going to drill baby drill, we must also be asked to mine baby mine." Oil prices are at a three-year low, but it is unclear whether energy companies...

A company executive confirmed that Argentina had not requested an extra floating regasification facility from Excelerate Energy in the coming winter, because the South American nation plans to import less liquefied gas this year. Derek Wong (Excelerate's Vice President of Government Relations) told the CERAWeek Conference in Houston, that the floating storage unit and regasification facility (FSRU), the company's only import facility, could be sufficient to meet the demand this year depending on the weather. In the past, Argentina has faced high costs for LNG imports. However, an increase in domestic production of natural gas and LNG cargos has led...

A Cheniere Energy executive announced on Tuesday that U.S. regulators had approved the expansion of Cheniere Energy Corpus Christi's liquefied gas plant. Anatol Fygin, Chief Commercial Officer of the company, said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had approved the construction of Midscale trains 8 & 9 for the company. Cheniere, the U.S.'s largest LNG producer, played a major role in helping the U.S. become the world’s leading exporter of supercooled gas. Cheniere expects to increase its production of LNG at its Corpus Christi plant in Texas by 3 million metric tons per year with the addition of two new...

Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary of the United States, said Monday at CERAWeek's energy conference in Houston that the U.S. had approved an extension of Delfin LNG’s free-trade permit. Delfin has developed a floating liquefied gas project (LNG) off the coast Louisiana. The project could include four LNG plants that have a production capacity of 13,3 million metric tons per annum. It is seeking to extend its export permit for five years to enable it to export LNG into countries without free trade agreements with United States. The delay in building the plants was attributed to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This...

U.S. Energy Sec. Chris Wright stated on Monday that global heating is an unavoidable side effect of the construction of modern society. He also vowed to stop former President Joe Biden’s climate policies, which promoted fossil fuels. Wright's comments were made at the opening of CERAWeek in Houston, the largest energy conference in the country. He said: "The Trump administration is going to treat climate change as a global physical phenomena that is an unfortunate side effect of the building of modern society." "Everything we do in life is a trade-off." Everything." He stated that the future growth in energy...

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith stated on Monday that Alberta would continue to export crude oil to the United States, but the tariffs threatened by U.S. president Donald Trump also highlighted the need for other markets. She said that U.S. tariffs do not currently apply to Canadian crude oils, but producers are required to complete paperwork to prove compliance. She said this at the CERAWeek conference on energy in Houston. Alberta Premier added that Canada could increase its oil export capacity to the U.S. from 2 million barrels a day. She said that Alberta will continue to provide energy to the...

Venture Global announced on Thursday that it will increase the production capacity of the Plaquemines LNG Plant in Louisiana from 27 million tonnes per year (mtpa) to 45 mtpa with an additional $18 billion investment. The company had raised earlier that day its estimate for the initial phases of Plaquemines construction by about $2 billion. The third phase expansion of the LNG plant will add 24 trains to the existing 36, bringing Venture Global's investment in current and future projects in Louisiana up to $75 billion. CEO Mike Sable stated that. After the first production of its CP2 Export Plant...

New Fortress Energy, a U.S. LNG company, posted a loss for the fourth quarter of 2014 on Monday. This was due to deteriorating performance from its terminals and infrastructure as well as ships. LNG exports to the U.S. reached near-record levels by December 2024. Lower LNG export prices coupled with higher costs squeezed the margins of companies like New Fortress. Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that LNG export prices were $6.26 per 1,000 cubic feet (Mcf), down 18% on 2023. The operating margin at NFE's Terminals and Infrastructure unit fell 44.8%, to $206.1 millions during the quarter. The...

Two sources who have direct knowledge of this matter, but spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the talks to restart Kurdish crude oil exports via the Iraq-Turkey pipe are at a standstill due to a lack in clarity regarding payments and contracts. Negotiations, which began in late February, failed to resolve a standoff of nearly two years that had halted the flow of goods from Iraqi Kurdistan, in the northern part of the country, to Turkey's Mediterranean Port of Ceyhan. Last month, it was reported that the Trump administration has asked Iraq for a restart of the shipments...

An internal document obtained by revealed that the Venezuelan state-run PDVSA would cut its office hours. This was in response to an order from the government, which was issued amid an intensifying power crisis, to conserve energy. On Sunday, the administration of Nicolas Maduro declared that all government offices will reduce their working hours by half due to longer power outages in certain regions caused by reduced hydroelectric generation and lack of fuel for thermoelectric plants. PDVSA, as part of the plan by the government, told its employees on Friday that they should work in administrative offices only three days...

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that an above-ground line of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power near the Pacific Palisades had been energized at the time the Palisades Fire started early this year. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the line caused the fire, according to the municipal utility. More than two months after the fire began, the transmission line near the hills has been under scrutiny. The blaze is expected to go down as one of the worst natural disasters ever in U.S. History. In a new complaint filed against the...

Venture Global Inc, a U.S. developer of LNG, has requested permission from federal regulators to start operations at its Calcasieu Pass export facility and TransCameron pipe project. This is the final step to moving into commercial operations. The U.S.'s second largest LNG exporter has told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it believes it can produce at the design capacity of the plant after making significant progress with remedial work. Calcasieu Pass is confident that it has completed all the required paperwork Documentation demonstrating readiness to begin service of the remaining facility," the FERC filing stated. According to the filing,...

In a group message that accidentally revealed plans by the U.S. for an attack on Yemen's Iran aligned Houthis, senior Trump officials including Vice President JDVance and Defense Sec Pete Hegseth accused Europe "freeloading" The attacks by the Houthis on ships in Red Sea have impacted trade between Europe and the U.S. What is the situation in the Red Sea? In response to threats by the Houthis to resume attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea, the U.S. launched massive military strikes against them on 16 March that resulted in the death of at least 31 people. The Houthis, a...

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said that the Army Corps of Engineers would complete its revised list of projects for energy under President Donald Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency as soon as next Monday. The Army Corps is a federal engineering agency with the authority to approve projects that involve wetlands and waterways. In February, the Army Corps posted a list of over 600 projects in need of faster environmental approvals. However, the list was quickly removed from the website so the agency could have more time to review the projects. Original list included several high-profile projects,...

One of the topics on the agenda is a possible relief in the sanctions against Russia, which includes its vast energy sector. The oil and gas sector is a major source of revenue for Moscow. It has been under Western sanctions since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. These sanctions were tightened considerably after Russia invaded Ukraine 2022. Washington announced its most severe round of sanctions in January 2010. Here are some implications of a possible reversal. RUSSIA TRADE with US and EU Before the war, Russia was the biggest supplier of fuel oil in the United States. It...

According to a Monday lawsuit, several residents of Los Angeles affected by the Palisades Wildfire have sued the city authorities for claiming that the fire was ignited by municipal utility power lines. The lawsuit cited an article in the Washington Post dated January 12 where the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power informed the newspaper that its power lines close to the source of the fire were disconnected from the electrical system for five year, which was wrong according to the resident's lawyers. Last week, the Los Angeles city counsel acknowledged that the statement made to Washington Post had...

The fire that raged at an oil depot hit by a drone in southern Russia for the fifth day on Sunday, according to the regional administration, continued to burn as firefighters attempted to put out the flames at the facility, which delivers Russian crude into the Caspian Pipeline. Russia accused Ukraine of being responsible for the drone attack that took place on 19 March, claiming Kyiv violated a ceasefire proposed on attacks against energy sites. The depot is only a few kilometers away from the Kropotkinskaya Pumping Station of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which was also struck by a drone...

The Kremlin announced on Monday that the Russian moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure in Ukraine was still in effect despite reports of Ukrainian attacks against Russian energy infrastructure targets. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters that Russia is monitoring the situation. The United States can do the same thing and reach its own conclusions. In a phone call on Tuesday, last week, the Russian president Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counter-part Donald Trump agreed to observe a 30 day ceasefire on Ukrainian targets for energy. Peskov replied that "there haven't been any other orders given by the president"...

Hayan Abdel Ghani, Iraq's Oil Minister, has claimed that Iranian oil tanks seized by U.S. troops in the Gulf used forged Iraqi documentation. The Trump administration has re-instituted "maximum" pressure on Iran. This is a new policy that seeks a way to isolate Iran from the global economic system and to eliminate its oil revenue to slow down Tehran's nuclear weapons development. Abdel-Ghani, was asked whether he received any messages from the United States regarding the possibility of sanctions being imposed on the state oil marketing company SOMO for violating Iranian sanctions. The oil minister told state television that he...

After meeting with provincial and territorial leaders, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada could offset any U.S. Tariffs by removing its internal trade barriers. He also stated his goal of achieving free trade in Canada by July 1. Carney told reporters, "We will introduce legislation before the 1st July to allow goods to move freely across the nation... without federal barriers." "We can offset any U.S. Tariffs more than enough by eliminating the internal trade barriers." Carney's website quotes research that shows removing internal trade barriers could reduce costs up to 15%, and expand the economy from 4% to...