Energy

The UK’s BG Group has approved its biggest ever investment, a £9.3 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) development in north-east Australia.

Following environmental approvals from the Australian government, the company will now proceed with the first phase of the project—to build a liquefaction plant on Curtis Island, Queensland.

The project will also involve construction of a 540 kilometre pipeline to move gas from the Queensland interior, where the gas will be drilled using 6,000 bore holes, to the liquefaction plant.

Poland’s Kulczyk Holding has been selected for exclusive talks to buy the state’s 51 per cent in Enea, the country’s third largest power generator.

The decision means that France’s GDF Suez is now out of the running to buy the utility.

Kulczyk will have until November 3 to negotiate the purchase of the government’s shares, worth more than five billion zlotys (approximately €1.2 billion).

Kulczyk Holding has emphasised that, if successful, it hopes to build a private Polish energy company around Enea.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has posted a 6.5 per cent rise in third quarter net profits on the back of higher oil and gas prices.

Net profits rose to $3.46 billion, up from $3.25 billion a year earlier. Group revenues were $90.71 billion, compared with $75.01 billion the previous year.

Due to new field start-ups, total oil and gas production rose by five per cent to 3.058 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, beating analysts’ expectations of a 3.4 per cent rise.

Owen Silavweand Aaron Botha talk to Gay Sutton about a transmission line project that will make Copperbelt Energy Corporation the export route for DRC’s power for another generation; and the construction of a new hydro power plant in an area of historic significance for Zambia.

BP announced today that it has reached agreement to sell its recently acquired interests in four mature producing deepwater oil and gas fields in the US Gulf of Mexico to Marubeni Oil and Gas for $650 million.

BP acquired the interests in the Magnolia, Merganser, Nansen and Zia fields from Devon Energy earlier in 2010 as part of a wider acquisition of assets in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and Azerbaijan.

Denver-based oil and gas exploration and production company Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp, is extending its assets in the Williston Basin of North Dakota.

The company has announced a definitive purchase and sale agreement with a private oil and gas company to acquire high-working-interest, contiguous Bakken/Three Forks Williston Basin leasehold and producing properties for $99 million in cash and the direct issuance of 2.75 million shares of common stock to the seller at a price of $4.00 per share.  

Northeast Utilities and NSTAR have agreed to merge in a deal that will form New England's premier utility company, worth $17.5 billion.

The companies have described the deal as a merger of equals, but if it goes through it will retain the Northeast Utilities name. NU shareholders would own approximately 56 percent and NSTAR shareholders would own approximately 44 percent of the combined company.

Nova Scotia's main energy regulator has given a $208 million biomass project the green light.

Nova Scotia Power and NewPage Port Hawkesbury had asked the board to approve a plan to burn 650,000 tonnes of wood a year to fire a steam generator at a paper mill in Cape Breton.

The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Boardhas now said that the project can proceed, but it outlined several conditions in an effort to protect customers from footing the bill for any overrunning costs or a plant failure.

London-based Sirius Petroleum has entered a conditional agreement to purchase a 40 per cent participating interest in Nigeria’s Ke oil field and the surrounding Ke farmout area.

In order to fund the development of Ke, the company is preparing to place 313.9 million new shares, representing 30.73 per cent of the enlarged share capital to raise £15.67 million.

Global energy giant Royal Dutch Shell is to give the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) $25 million to research and develop high value, sustainable technologies to drive innovation in energy delivery.

The money, to be delivered in five annual payments of $5 million, will go to the MIT Energy Initiative, a program that conducts research aimed at transforming the way the world obtains and uses its energy.