LONDON, Nov 16 (Reuters) – The concept of a “super-grid”
capable of moving huge amounts of electricity over long
distances is popular with environmentalists and governments keen
to promote the integration of more renewables into the power
supply, overcome transmission bottlenecks and bring power to
remote communities.

“An electricity super-grid could take green electricity
produced in one country to another through thousands of
kilometres of sub-sea cables. Wind farms built out at sea could
also be connected to a number of countries,” Britain’s
Department of Energy and Climate Change announced last year.

LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Four of the world’s most
successful oil and gas exploration companies last month signed
contracts to invest more than $1.5 billion over the next three
years in prospecting for fossil fuels off the coast of Uruguay,
betting that geological conditions which produced deposits off
the West African coast are replicated on Uruguay’s continental
shelf.

Sandwiched between hydrocarbon giants Brazil and Argentina,
Uruguay produces just 900 barrels of oil per day, according to
the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). It imports
nearly all the crude used in its lone refinery at Montevideo as
well as refined products.

LONDON (Reuters) – Much as the anger at continued power outages in New York and other states hit by storm Sandy is understandable, past experience shows a two-week wait is far from unusual.

Thirteen days after the post-tropical cyclone hit the East Coast, almost 90,000 customers were still without mains power on Monday, the vast majority in New York state (80,000).

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – The Bakken oil revolution has
become synonymous with North Dakota. But the heart of most
productive part of the formation is located on the far western
boundary of the state and extends across the border into
Montana.

In the early stages of Bakken exploration, drilling was
split fairly evenly between the two states. But from about 2006
the focus shifted squarely onto North Dakota and Montana’s
Bakken was largely forgotten. Now there are signs of a modest
revival.

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields
are so important for the growth of U.S. production, and as the
herald of a worldwide shale revolution, that any sign output is
starting to peak would have huge consequences for the oil
industry.

In recent months, the number of rigs drilling in North
Dakota has fallen around 10 percent from just over 200 in June
to about 180 in October, according to weekly counts published by
oilfield services company Baker Hughes.

LONDON (Reuters) – Could oil production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana rival output from Saudi Arabia’s supergiant Ghawar oilfield, the greatest oil-bearing structure the world has ever known?

Until recently, comparisons between the shale fields of the Bakken and Ghawar, which produces 5 million barrels per day, would have been dismissed as fanciful.

LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Some of the world’s largest
undiscovered oil and gas deposits lie under shallow seas on the
broad continental shelves off the northern coasts of Alaska,
Canada and especially Russia — a tantalising prize for the
major international oil companies, but once which has so far
eluded them.

“The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the
geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum
remaining on Earth,” according to the United States Geological
Survey (USGS).

LONDON (Reuters) – “Elections have consequences, and Eric, I won,” President Barack Obama famously told House Republican Whip Eric Cantor shortly after his first inauguration in January 2009.

Four years later, Wall Street as well as the oil and gas industry will return to work today knowing that they heavily backed the losing side and now have very little political capital with the re-elected Obama administration and the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.

LONDON (Reuters) – Steelmaker Nucor will help protect expansion of U.S. iron and steel making capacity against an expected future rise in U.S. natural gas prices by taking a 50 percent working interest in onshore gas wells to be drilled and operated by Encana.

The agreement builds on an earlier, smaller agreement between the two companies struck in 2010. But the increased number of wells covered offers Nucor much more protection against future variations in the price of natural gas, which is one of the biggest input costs for its iron and steel operations.

LONDON (Reuters) – Some analysts still question the transformative impact of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling on the oil industry. Doubters should pay a visit to Mountrail County, North Dakota.

Running little more than 40 miles from East to West, and 50 miles from North to South, with a population of 7,673, according to the North Dakota Association of Counties, Mountrail is at the epicenter of the largest drilling boom in the world. Mountrail has done more than any other place to remake the oil industry in the last decade.