Friday, November 2, 2012

Seismic blast for blue whales

Seismic blast for blue whales:
 "It's astonishing on two levels," said IFAW campaign officer Matt Collis. "Firstly, because it was put forward by Woodside for this time, and secondly, because the environment department allowed it to go ahead."

4 comments:

  1. As if everyone didn't know that Ferguson was ever so cosy with his mining mates,but don't say a word about it - or else!

    RELATIONS between the federal government and Rob Oakeshott have turned poisonous after a senior cabinet minister initiated legal action against the NSW independent MP concerning comments he made about the mining tax.

    Mr Oakeshott has been threatened legally by the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, after comments Mr Oakeshott made to The Sydney Morning Herald last week after it was revealed the mining tax would make next to no revenue in its first three months.
    ...
    The Herald has received a similar letter from Mr Ferguson's lawyers threatening similar action after Mr Oakeshott's comments were reported in the paper on Friday last week and on the website smh.com.au.

    Mr Ferguson played a pivotal role in renegotiating the mining tax with the big minerals companies after Kevin Rudd was ditched as prime minister in June 2010 and his Resources Super Profits Tax radically altered into the Minerals Resources Rent Tax.

    Mr Oakeshott supports taking the MRRT back to Parliament after reports it would make no revenue in its first three months. The government claimed the revenue shortfall was due to a slump in commodity process while its detractors blamed generous deductions the miners can claim against their MRRT liability.

    Mr Oakeshott questioned the deductions and Mr Ferguson's role during negotiations.

    Mr Ferguson's lawyers contend this to be ''false, defamatory and indefensible under defamation law''.

    ..........................

    Just hot off the presses - Ferguson drops legal action against Oakshot.

    ............................

    THE government would make an extra $26 billion over the next four years if it reversed a handful of changes made to the mining tax after it dumped Kevin Rudd in 2010 and sought to soothe the big miners.

    Independent modelling by the new Parliamentary Budget Office finds the changes would assure a budget surplus and provide enough revenue to increase the dole and fund key policy promises on disabilities and education.

    The modelling was commissioned by the Greens leader, Christine Milne, who is urging the government to amend its mining tax following revelations it will raise little or no revenue in its first three months of operation and amid rising doubts about overall revenue forecast
    ..
    The budget office finds that if all three measures were adopted, the total revenue increase would be about $26 billion.

    The Greens have previously insisted the tax also be applied to other minerals beyond coal and iron ore and include gold, copper and uranium. But this was not costed by the budget office.

    The government, which backed down after a $22 million advertising blitz by the miners in 2010, has ruled out making any changes to the tax.

    What could be done with $26 billion over four years

    Fully fund the Gonski recommendations to boost school funding by $5 billion a year

    Increase dole by $50 a week

    Fund the Disability Insurance Scheme, estimated to need $8 billion extra a year by 2018.

    Fully fund Denticare, estimated at about

    $4 billion a year

    Invest in high-speed rail

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  2. HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported lackluster earnings on Thursday because of declining oil and natural gas production and weak domestic gas prices.
    ..
    Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, became the country’s biggest gas producer three years ago when it bought XTO Energy for $41 billion. The purchase gave Exxon Mobil experienced personnel in exploring and drilling in shale formations, but gas drilling in the United States has become increasingly unprofitable the last couple of years and few analysts expect gas prices to increase much over the next year.
    ..
    “We’re seeing evidence of a weak economy all around us in our downstream, marketing and our chemicals business, so the downstream rally overall could be short-lived,” he told reporters on a conference call.

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    Nov 2 (LNGJ)-The UK will receive its first LNG cargo in more than a month when the 266,000 cubic metres capacity Qatari Q-Max carrier "Shagra" arrives on November 9 at the South Hook import terminal in Milford Haven, according to port authorities. The last delivery from Qatar to the Welsh terminal was on October 1..

    ............

    Tokyo Gas is reducing customer prices for December because of lower imported average LNG prices of under $900 per tonne in the past three months, while the largest LNG buyer Tokyo Electric Power expects to import 5 percent more LNG in the current fiscal year.

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    Magellan Petroleum Corp., Denver, let a contract to Seabird Exploration FZ-LLC for the seismic recording vessel Voyager Explorer to undertake a 75 sq mile 3D and an 84 mile 2D seismic survey on Magellan’s NT/P82 exploration permit in the Bonaparte basin offshore Australia.

    Shooting is to take 2 weeks starting in the second week of December 2012, and interpretation is expected to take the following 3 months.

    Magellan has 100% interest in NT/P82, which lies in 55-400 ft of water 160 miles northwest of Darwin.

    Under license terms and pending seismic results, Magellan is required to drill a well by May 2015. The company expects to incur $4.5 million to shoot, process, and analyze the seismic.

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    Replies
    1. "Total pledges from the industry to invest $US350 billion to $US450 billion in projects for US liquefied natural gas exports were ''a little bit optimistic''"

      Australia has more than $170 billion worth of LNG export projects under construction, and the country's gas developers have planned to add more than 80 million tonnes per annum of LNG production before the end of the decade, an increase that would make Australia the world's top LNG exporter, surpassing Qatar.

      IT MAY BE "A LITTLE BIT OPTOMISTIC" BUT IT SURE PUTS AUSTRALIA'S INVESTMENT IN PERSPECTIVE.

      As often gets mentioned the US have dozens of LNG import terminals laying idle and all they have to do is reverse the pipeline flows and build the trains.

      Compare this to the JPP proposal.

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  3. Anadarko Gas Project Mozambique

    ENOUGH GAS TO JUSTIFY 10 TRAINS.

    Its spokesperson John Christiansen told AIM “we have a tremendous discovery in Mozambique.

    When you look at all the resources that we have found in Offshore Area 1, it is approaching 100 trillion cubic feet of total gas in place with recoverable resources of between 35 and 65 trillion cubic feet”.

    The company is focusing its initial development on building two liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains, each capable of processing five million tonnes of LNG a year, which can then be shipped to market.

    However, Christiansen says that the resources are there to justify ten trains, producing 50 million tonnes of gas per year in future years.

    In the first phase the company and its partners will be investing about 15 billion US dollars in Mozambique, which includes the offshore development and the LNG facilities on land. It aims to be producing the first gas for market in 2018.

    ....................

    Chevron Corp. said it was continuing to grow its Australian Wheatstone LNG project to create expansion opportunities and the huge Gorgon LNG development on Barrow Island offshore Western Australian was more than 50 percent complete.

    (THE GORGON PROJECT KEEPS FINDING MORE GAS AND THEY ARE ALREADY UP TO 4 TRAINS)

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    Indonesia and BP of the UK have finally approved the $12 billion addition of a Third liquefaction Train at the BP-operated Tangguh LNG plant in West Papua.

    ....................

    Gazprom approves Eastern Gas Program step

    GAZPROM managers have approved investments for an important step in the Eastern Gas Program integrating field developments, pipeline, and natural gas production centers in East Siberia and Russia’s Far East (OGJ Online, Sept. 17, 2012).

    The investments will cover predevelopment of Chayandinskoye gas and condensate field, transmission pipelines, and a gas production center at Yakutia in the Republic of Sakha.

    In the next stage, Gazprom will fully develop Kovyktinskoye gas field, which is southwest of Chayandinskoye in the Irkutsk Oblast, and lay an 800-km pipeline between a production center there and Yakutia. Gazprom estimates Chayandinskoye reserves at 1.2 trillion cu m of natural gas and 79.1 million tonnes of oil and condensate.

    The Eastern Gas Program includes plans for additional production centers and a pipeline connecting at Khabarovsk with an existing pipeline between Sakhalin and Vladivostok.

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