Under new ownership: Houston-based Parallax Energy announced this morning that it has acquired Louisiana LNG Energy LLC, the company that’s behind a proposed liquefied natural gas project in Plaquemines Parish. Financial details of the sale were not disclosed. Louisiana LNG initiated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission process for the Plaquemines project last July, and has applied for permits to export liquefied natural gas to both Free Trade Agreement and non-FTA countries. Parallax is also behind the Live Oak LNG project that was announced earlier this year for Calcasieu Parish. “The addition of Louisiana LNG to our company sets the Parallax strategy firmly into motion,” says founding partner and chairman Martin Houston in a press release, which has more details on this morning’s announcement.
Past and present: Five years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill poured millions of barrels of crude into the sea, BP is being challenged over its hunt for oil in the pristine waters off southern Australia. Bloomberg reports that just over a year before the U.K.-based company has said it expects to start drilling, environmentalists say the company hasn’t yet disclosed its full emergency-response plans for a potential spill in the Great Australian Bight, home to about 18 threatened species, from whales to turtles. BP’s initial models show a less than 10% chance that a worst-case incident would lead to oil threatening areas where whales are likely to feed. It’s clear the project will face significant scrutiny before drilling begins. Read the full story.
Across an ocean: Offshore LNG import terminals have gone international, as a number of smaller importers are hoping to use the floating facilities to bridge the gap until onshore facilities can be built, according to a government report. As FuelFix.com reports, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Monday that of the four countries planning to start LNG imports in 2015, three have chosen to do so using offshore facilities. Those facilities, known as regasification plants because they take liquefied natural gas and return it to a gas fuel, are in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt. The floating regasification facilities can be developed more quickly than onshore facilities of comparable size and can be moved around to serve other areas once larger projects are in place, the EIA says. Read the full story.
