Stillwater streetlights The City of Stillwater is the latest to join the movement toward LED streetlights.
Stillwater Electric Utility began installing the first of 4,400 fixtures earlier this month, and the project is expected to take nearly two years to complete.
“LED lighting consumes less energy to operate, requires minimal maintenance, and the lights have a longer lifespan,” said Loren Smith, director of Electric Utility. Additionally, “They provide a higher quality of lighting, which improves traffic safety and road conditions.”
Job losses, gains The government reported recently that the oil and gas industry lost 3,741 jobs in January.
Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that job availability, compared to December, decreased by 0.6% across the sector.
The Energy Workforce & Technology Council analyzed preliminary data and calculated Oklahoma had nearly 49,100 workers in the state’s oilfield. The U.S. decline in oil and gas contributed to a 3.7% unemployment rate across the nation.
While national job growth posted a surprisingly strong increase in January, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce analysis found that workforce participation remains below pre-pandemic levels.
Frac sand supplier plans to go public Alpine Silica Holding, a frac sand supplier that started sand mining operations in Oklahoma six years ago, plans to go public.
Alpine’s parent company, ProFrac Holding Corp., filed the requisite paperwork recently. Alpine Silica is ProFrac’s proppant production segment and has existing operations throughout Louisiana and Texas.
Alpine Silica operates frac sand reserves and produces five different sand products throughout Louisiana in the Haynesville play and in the Permian Basin of West Texas.
In 2018 Alpine announced plans to build a new frac sand plant in Fay, a small town west of Kingfisher in the far southeastern corner of Dewey County. The company stated at the time it had secured nearly 51 million tons of reserves for the Oklahoma project, which was in the middle of the STACK play. It expected to produce nearly three million tons of frac sand a year.
However, Alpine’s website indicated the Fay operation is temporarily closed. Now the company is moving forward as investors believe there could be a rebound for U.S. initial public offering markets.
California bans fracking Nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom directed it, California’s oil and gas industry regulator kick-started a process to ban hydraulic fracturing, the fossil fuel extraction method known as ‘fracking.’
Another tire plant closing Four months after Michelin North America announced it is closing its tire plant at Ardmore, another tire company has announced similar plans and for the same reason: changes in tire demand as a result of the electric vehicle industry and the cost of meeting those demands.
Michelin issued a statement in November 2023, indicating it made the difficult decision because the southern Oklahoma plant could no longer meet the changing demands of the auto industry. It will close the Ardmore facility by 2025.
German auto supplier Continental made a similar announcement last week. It plans to cut more than 7,100 jobs worldwide by 2025 because the switch to electric vehicles forces companies in the sector to retool. The company has nearly 200,000 workers across the globe.
How is the EV industry affecting tire manufacturing? It has to do with instant torque, which electric vehicles are able to do while gas-powered vehicles cannot. As a result, it is harder on tires and according to some reports, some EVs wear standard tires at a rate 30% faster than tires on gas-powered cars and trucks.
As a result, there is a demand or increased need for specialized tires which are wider on EVs and it means retooling for tire manufacturers. It’s a cost they don’t want to assume.
Raise royalty rates The New Mexico House of Representatives passed a measure that would compel energy producers to pay higher royalty rates on premium oil and gas leases offered by the State Land Office.
One sponsor said the state has a duty to maximize profits from oil and gas leases to benefit schools, reported New Mexico Political Report.
As explained to the legislature, the bill would mostly affect the Permian Basin in the southeastern region of New Mexico but not the San Juan Basin in the northwest; the reason is because the premium leases are in the Permian Basin.
The existing cap is 20% for the state, but the bill would raise the maximum royalty rate to 25%. Royalty rates have not been changed since the 1970s. Keep the public out!
A fight is brewing in the Kansas Legislature over a bill aimed at exempting the Kansas Corporation Commission from the state’s Open Meetings Act.
Skepticism has been raised by the Kansas Electric Cooperatives and its 29 nonprofit cooperatives. Under the bill filed by a Wichita state representative, corporation commissioners would be able to sidestep the Open Meetings Act when considering contested issues on the commission’s docket, Kansas Reflector reported.
The measure also would forbid the commissioners from holding secret conversations with regulated businesses or their attorneys.
BlackRock backs off ESG BlackRock, the investment firm banned from doing business with state entities in Oklahoma because of its environmental, social and governance policies, is backing off its previous commitment to an international climate change coalition.
The coalition, known as Climate Action 100+, promoted stronger action on climate change. But last week BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and State Street were among firm that either quit or changed their participation in the project.
JPMorgan Chase and State Street pulled out entirely while BlackRock transferred its members to its international arm, a move that essentially limited its involvement.
BlackRock has been under growing pressure from states such as Oklahoma and Texas, where it has been banned from doing state business because of its policies that reportedly discriminated against the oil and gas industry. The company was targeted in Oklahoma because of a new law in which firms that discriminate against oil and gas are banned from doing business with state entities.
While BlackRock remains on the State Treasurer’s banned list created through the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act of 2022, a recent OK Energy Today review of Securities and Exchange Commission records showed BlackRock has major investments in Vital Energy, ONEOK, ONE Gas, and Chesapeake Energy. 7 rigs for Saudi Aramco Helmerich & Payne in Tulsa reached a deal to provide seven new rigs to Saudi Aramco.
Terms of the contract were finalized as the seven super-spec rigs were awarded 5-year contracts with 1-year options. The rigs are expected to be put into immediate use once they are delivered, and that should be in the fourth quarter of this year.
These rigs will be sourced from H&P’s idle super-spec FlexRigs in the U.S. and, during fiscal 2024, the company plans to convert the rigs to walking configurations and further equip them to suit Saudi Aramco’s unconventional gas drilling rig specifications.
Atlanta battery factory planned by Norwegians A Norwegian battery company has been working since 2022 to open a supersize factory outside of Atlanta.
Freyr Battery is developing a manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries that it says will be less expensive and have less waste than the processes many competitors use. The batteries would be available for stationary energy storage and for use in electric vehicles.
The plant near Atlanta will cost more than $2.5 billion to build and employ 723 people. Currently the company has a head count of 213, most of them in Norway.
French EV subsidy cut The French government cut by 20% a subsidy higher-income car buyers can get for buying electric and hybrid vehicles, in order to keep from overrunning its budget to boost the number of electric cars on the road.
Shell predicts gas boom Shell, the British oil-and-gas company, predicts global demand for liquefied natural gas will grow beyond 2040, driven by industrial demand in China and economic development in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Russian tankers idle A large fleet of oil tankers used to export Russian crude oil is grinding to a halt, potentially as a result of increased U.S. sanctions on the Russian oil market, Bloomberg reported Feb. 13. Nearly half of the 50 tankers sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in October have not loaded cargo since they appeared on tracking sites.