LONDON (Reuters) – Six promising marine energy technologies will share 22 million pounds ($35.04 million) of UK government funding to speed up deployment of full scale prototypes, the Carbon Trust said on Tuesday.

The independent company set up by the government to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy hopes the funding will help make marine energy technologies ready for mass deployment by 2020 and keep Britain’s lead in the fledgling industry.

It has selected Atlantis Resources, Aquamarine Power, Hammerfest Strom UK, Marine Current Turbines, Pelamis Wave Power and Voith Hydro to receive funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

“Generating electricity from the UK’s powerful wave and tidal resource not only plays a crucial role in meeting our climate change targets but also presents a significant economic opportunity for the UK,” Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said.

OSLO/LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Gas production returned to normal levels at Troll, Norway’s biggest field, and operator Statoil described the supplies as “secure and reliable” after a several hour stoppage stoked alarm in Britain on Thursday.

Norwegian oil and gas producer Statoil said the ramp-up of gas production at Troll was completed in the afternoon hours after the field’s A platform was shut for about two hours from about 0815 GMT on Thursday.

“Let me stress that Troll supplies are secure and reliable,” Statoil spokesman Gisle Johanson said. “Troll is back up to normal levels.”

Troll, which can supply more than 10 percent of Britain’s peak winter gas demand, as well as ship heating fuel to continental Europe, also shut because of a leak on Sunday, contributing to a surge in gas prices as freezing weather gripped northern Europe. [ID:nNWLA1862]

LONDON (Reuters) – Icy conditions have driven a surge in energy demand in heavily populated parts of the northern hemisphere but some countries are enjoying a relatively mild winter, data shows.

Severe weather, partly due to the El Nino weather phenomenon, has frozen parts of northwest Europe that usually escape the coldest winter temperatures, driving gas demand to records in Britain [ID:nWLA2033] and straining French power systems. In China there are energy rations.

“I think the impression is that because north Asia is cold, and parts of North America and Europe are cold people have tended to get the impression that the whole of the northern hemisphere is cold,” said Robin Thwaytes, a forecaster at the Met Office, Britain’s official weather center.

“But that isn’t the case. Generally it evens itself out in that for every area that is cold there are some areas that are very warm.”

LONDON (Reuters) – Spain had to shut down some of its wind turbines on Wednesday as wet and windy weather caused a surge in green electricity generation at a time of low demand, grid operator Red Electrica said.

The country’s thousands of wind turbines supplied a new record of 54.1 percent of demand early on Wednesday, forcing gas- and coal-fired power plants to run at minimum output to avoid system overload as hydropower companies drained brimming reservoirs.

“High wind output in the early hours of this morning, together with the high level of hydropower generation, due to reservoirs opening up after recent rains, forced the control center to cut thermal power to a technical minimum,” Red Electrica said in a statement.

“Due to low demand at the moment this was not enough … So the control center had to order wind power production to be cut between 4 am and 7 am this morning by 600 megawatts.”

LONDON (Reuters) – Cartel opponents Australia, Canada and the Netherlands are unlikely to join an OPEC-like gas group, despite Russian claims that they might.

Russian officials heading the GECF, whose 11 members control nearly three-quarters of the world’s proven gas reserves, said last Tuesday the GECF could become a price-influencing group like OPEC.

It said the Netherlands was in talks to participate, and that Canada and Australia could get involved later.

The prospect of the Netherlands, the biggest gas producer in the European Union, or Canada — the biggest supplier to the United States — colluding with the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) would startle consumers already concerned about prices and uncertain supply.

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp’s $30 billion takeover of XTO Energy Inc is a major vote of confidence in natural gas and the latest sign that the world’s top oil companies are looking to invest more in the cleaner-burning fuel.

Gas prices across the world have slumped in 2009, largely due to a surge in U.S. output from unconventional gas companies like XTO. But global demand for natural gas is expected to surge back more than 50 percent by 2030, making it the fastest-growing major energy source of the next few decades and promising fat profits for reserve holders.

In anticipation of a demand surge, the oil majors have started opening their wallets for expensive gas projects like gas liquefaction plants and pricey gas shale wells.

“This is about the next 10 to 20 to 30 years of what we believe has now emerged as a very important part of the global resource portfolio,” Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said on a conference call with investors on Monday.

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp’s <XOM.N> $30 billion takeover of XTO Energy Inc <XTO.N> is a major vote of confidence in natural gas and the latest sign that the world’s top oil companies are looking to invest more in the cleaner-burning fuel.

Gas prices across the world have slumped in 2009, largely due to a surge in U.S. output from unconventional gas companies like XTO. But global demand for natural gas is expected to surge back more than 50 percent by 2030, making it the fastest-growing major energy source of the next few decades and promising fat profits for reserve holders.

In anticipation of a demand surge, the oil majors have started opening their wallets for expensive gas projects like gas liquefaction plants and pricey gas shale wells.

“This is about the next 10 to 20 to 30 years of what we believe has now emerged as a very important part of the global resource portfolio,” Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said on a conference call with investors on Monday.

BARCELONA, Dec 2 (Reuters) – The Nigeria LNG (NLNG) plant expects supplies from Royal Dutch Shell’s <RDSa.L> Soku feed gas plant to rise from current levels of around 0.5 billion cubic feet a day to a stable 0.65 bcf/day by 2010, an NLNG executive said.

At full production Soku, in the unstable Niger Delta, can supply about 1.1 bcf/day of gas to NLNG, or about 40 percent of the export terminal’s total feed gas.

But Soku is still only running at about half its capacity after reopening in October following lengthy repairs to pipelines damaged by gas thieves in 2008.

“When Soku went off we went to below 50 percent of our overall production capacity, but now with Soku 50-percent back that’s taken our overall production capacity up to about 60 percent,” Patrick Olinma, commercial manager at NLNG, told Reuters on Wednesday on the sidelines of an LNG conference in Barcelona.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s power market must be radically redesigned to spur hundreds of billions of pounds of investment in low-carbon technologies needed to fight climate change and keep the lights on, the heads of two UK utilities said on Wednesday.

Energy regulator Ofgem estimated in October that at least 200 billion pounds ($334.5 billion) of investment is needed over the next 15 years to meet electricity demand and climate change targets and some analysts say the final bill could be much bigger.

Most of the investment will be needed to replace Britain’s ancient coal- and oil-fired power plants, expected to close by 2015, with plants able to backup an expected boom in wind power capacity in the UK North Sea over the next few decades.

It still makes economic sense for utilities to run their fully-depreciated old fossil fuel plants when wholesale prices rise at times of tight electricity supply.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain set out plans Monday to speed up the planning process for big wind farms and new nuclear power plants and named 10 sites where reactors could be built.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said new nuclear plants, combined with cleaner coal plants and more renewable energy, would help Britain to secure its energy supplies and cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

About 20 percent of Britain’s electricity was generated from existing nuclear power reactors in the second quarter of 2009, but all except one of them is due to shut by 2025.

Previous attempts to build new nuclear plants have been delayed by the exhaustive planning process. It took six years and cost 30 millions pounds ($50.33 million) to secure planning consent to build the Sizewell B reactor in southern England.