Energy, Natural Gas | featured news

The next time you drive past a farm and smell cow manure, here's something to think about while you're holding your nose. The stinky stuff could someday be an inexpensive source for fueling your car and powering your home... The process of turning the waste into natural gas by using what are called anaerobic digesters, has become much more efficient. "We take the manure from the cows and put it into sealed digester vessels, the manure is heated to 100 degrees at which the bacteria produces methane and CO2, which is called biogas. The Biogas is cleaned to remove the CO2, using water and pressure to create biomethane, which is then odorized to create renewable natural gas" explains Mark Stoermann of AMP Americas, an energy company partnering with Fair Oaks Farm to create the fuel.

General Electric Co is buying oilfield pump maker Lufkin Industries Inc for $2.98 billion, sharply increasing its presence in the fast-growing market to extract oil and natural gas from shale rock, the conglomerate said on Monday.

At least 16 people were hurt and a popular wine bar was destroyed by an apparent natural gas explosion and ensuing fire at an upscale shopping district in Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday evening.

...The U.S. Department of Energy and industry partners over two winters drilled into a reservoir of methane hydrate, which looks like ice but burns like a candle if a match warms its molecules. There is little need now for methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. With the boom in production from hydraulic fracturing, the United States is awash in natural gas for the near future and is considering exporting it, but the DOE wants to be ready with methane if there's a need.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will lay out policies on Thursday aimed at achieving North American energy independence by 2020 by pursuing a sharp increase in production of oil and natural gas on federal lands and off the U.S. coast.

Carbon dioxide emissions hit an unexpected 20-year low earlier this year, mainly because utilities have switched from coal to natural gas.

King Coal is meeting its match: natural gas. Power plants fired by natural gas have set a new record by producing as much electricity in the United States as those run by coal, long the nation's dominant power producer.

Chesapeake Energy plans to sell midstream assets in three transactions totaling more than $4 billion in cash, as the natural-gas company struggles against mounting debt.

Exxon Mobil Corp reported a better-than-expected 53 percent increase in quarterly profit, helped by a lower tax rate and a surge in natural gas production in the United States and Qatar.

Exxon’s purchase of XTO, which has expertise in the growing area of shale gas, is one of the biggest energy deals in years.