Gas

The tumultuous Trump transition took another turn late Tuesday, as reports from many media outlets said he has picked Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a freshman who won a second House term in November’s election, to be Secretary of Interior. Many of the same media sources late last week said Trump would pick Washington Rep. Cathy […]

As one of its last official acts, the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) backed away from making a definitive statement on the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, saying it lacked sufficient data to quantify their severity and frequency. The 1,200-page final report issued December 13, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic […]

President-elect Donald Trump has picked former Texas governor Rick Perry to be his energy secretary

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as his nominee to be Secretary of the Interior. There had been no official announcement as this was being written December 9, but CNBC said it had been informed of the choice by a “senior Trump official.” The Wall Street Journal and the […]

In a finding that is likely to boost controversy over the future of U.S. energy policy, a comprehensive study of the full levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from various sources of electricity conducted by the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Energy Institute found that wind turbines and natural gas combined cycle power plants (CCPPs) […]

The owner of a merchant 1,022-MW combined cycle natural gas–fired power plant in California has filed for bankruptcy protection, citing regulatory policies and market forces that have depressed revenues. La Paloma Generating Co. on December 6 filed for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy, blaming a debt of $524 million that it racked up even though its four-unit […]

Coal, the unchallenged leader in U.S. power generation for most of the past century, may regain its place at the top of the energy mix hierarchy this winter, according to projections released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA’s November Short-Term Energy Outlook suggests that prices for natural gas delivered to the power […]

Plans to repower NRG Energy’s coal-fired 435-MW Dunkirk power plant near Buffalo, N.Y., to natural gas that have been stalled for years owing to a legal challenge may finally be revived. NRG Energy mothballed the four-unit plant in January 2016. The company had filed to mothball the facility nearly four years earlier, in March 2012, […]

Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change on November 21 announced regulatory actions to accelerate the phase-out of coal generation that lacks carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) across the country within the next few decades. The measures announced by Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna are part of a larger transition from “traditional” […]

“We’re at a very challenging time,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Tony Clark at the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) on November 14. We have a “need for infrastructure, but it’s more difficult to get it sited and built than ever before.” Clark’s comment, which he […]