We are sad to note a report from a reliable source that an important oil industry player is leaving Alaska.  Following a disappointing 4th quarter 2015 net loss of $7.2 billion — but not necessarily related to it — Apache Corporation will be leaving Alaska.  Details to follow.  -dh


 From Embassy News – Canada – comes this Mackenzie Valley Pipeline update by Marie-Danielle Smith.


Frank Murkowski, governor, senator, gas pipeline, lng, Dave Harbour PhotoFormer Governor Frank Murkowski (NGP Photo) Suggests "Another Approach" To Providing Alaska North Slope Gas Producers With Fiscal Certainty.  Note: we have always reminded readers that fiscal certainty provided for gas alone and not oil will be no certainty at all, no matter what technique is used: a contract or a constitutional amendment.  -dh 


From our friends at Alaska Headlamp: "Another hit to Alaska's credit ratingsMoody's Investors Service"


Aubrey McClendon, Fracking, Chesapeake, Oklahoma, Natural Gas, NARUC, Photo by Dave HarbourBy Heide Brandes, Reuters.  

Former Chesapeake Energy Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon (NGP Photo; SEE OUR 2011 STORY), a brash risk-taker who helped transform the U.S. energy industry with shale gas, died when his car slammed into an overpass on Wednesday, one day after being charged with breaking federal antitrust laws, police said. He was 56.  Full Reuters story here.  Read TOMORROW'S personal perspective by Richard Ranger, here.


Steve Borell, Climate Change, Global Warming, Alaska Miners Association, Photo by Dave HarbourWe thank reader Steve Borell (NGP Photo) for an important link to this revealing Reuters story by Johathan Landay.

Our commentary.  According to the Reuters story linked above, Osama bin Laden supported President Obama's climate change fixation.  (See our 2009 commentary.) 

Was that a strategy to save the world from warmer (or colder) climate, or a chess move toward the true environmental strategy of "Destroying Capitalism"?    

NGP readers know the answer.  Americans continue embracing a suicidal program of UN funding for special interests, intent on destroying their country.  

Earlier, we provided readers with evidence of Russian and mid-Eastern money flowing to anti-fracking environmental activists.

Oil industry companies have even been seduced to support the very movement designed to destroy and/or socialize it. 

So, there you have it.  The UN seeks to kill capitalism using a phony climate change strategy also supported by Obama, Russia and mid-Eastern dictatorships.  

We wonder if the madness will ever stop, or if it is simply too late now to stop the madness in spite of best efforts.

The answer to that wondering will soon become clear.

-dh

Fairfield Sun Times, by Kay Cashman, Publisher, Petroleum News.  When Bill Armstrong’s company took over operatorship of the 750,000 acres it owns jointly with Repsol on the North Slope, many Alaskans saw it as another casualty of low oil prices. The October announcement cancelled three of this winter’s wells in the fifth and last year of the partners’ aggressive $1 billion-plus exploration program, triggering fear the Spanish major, which had promised to make a field development decision in January, was pulling out of the state, and thus delaying development by years.

Instead, Bill Armstrong told Petroleum News Feb. 12, the new operator, Denver-based Armstrong Oil & Gas, and its now minority partner, Repsol E&P USA, are preparing to accelerate development of their Pikka unit and what is possibly a multibillion barrel resource in just two of at least six horizons, making it a contender in size with the North Slope legacy fields….  (more)


From our Mid Atlantic energy consultant friend comes this additional note on credit rating downgrades (See Alaska credit rating news):

The latest beatings being inflicted on Energy companies (the offshore drillers) seem to contain a hidden message on the current credit revamp. When Moody’s is cutting a slug of companies from three to five notches at a time, the question arises, “Where have they been in the review process for the last year?”  As one industry participant noted to us yesterday, it makes it more apparent that the OCC or the Fed is pushing the ratings agencies to put a heavy thumb on the scale in the current round of reviews. Now.

BOTTOM  LINE: Expect to see more of this in the next month. The Energy sector is being functionally excluded from the debt markets.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/02/29/moodys-cuts-ratings-at-six-offshore-drilling-companies/

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Seadrill-Partners-to-Caa2-negative-outlook–PR_344520

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-concludes-reviews-for-6-US-offshore-drillers–PR_344698 


From Embassy News – Canada – comes this Mackenzie Valley Pipeline update by Marie-Danielle Smith.  

When a natural gas pipeline along the Mackenzie Valley—in the western part of the Northwest Territories—was first proposed in the 1970s, it was “doomed by a series of endless consultations initiated by the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” contended Ms. Block.

A pipeline inquiry, handled by Justice Thomas Berger, had been commissioned by the government in 1974. Three years later, after long consultations with groups including First Nations communities along the proposed pipeline route, the inquiry decided a 10-year moratorium should be placed on pipeline planning, partly to allow for more time to settle land claims.

A few decades later, in 2004, the project was resurrected with seemingly stronger local support. It gained cabinet approval under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2011.

“Unfortunately, we are already seeing history repeating itself,” Ms. Block said. “The minister of transport responded to 18 months of work by Mr. Emerson…by stating that he ‘will be consulting stakeholders throughout the rest of this year.’”    More here….

 



From Alaska Headlamp:

Another hit to Alaska's credit ratingsMoody's Investors Service said in a report it would downgrade the state's general obligation rating to AA1, a step below the gold-plated AAA rating the agency had previously given Alaska. The downgrade reflects Alaska's "unprecedented structural imbalance" as it struggles to rein in a $3.8 billion deficit."Even with significant spending reductions, recurring revenues cannot keep pace with recurring expenditures, and the state would deplete its main budgetary reserves by fiscal 2019, absent significant changes in its financial framework," Moody's said. In January,Standard and Poor's also downgraded Alaska's general obligation credit. Fitch Ratings may soon join them. That ratings agency said on Tuesday it may downgrade the state's top-notch credit rating for general obligation bonds if officials don't properly address the turmoil, but (Read more)….