By Sean Cockerham

The push for mass coal exports from Washington state, already facing a huge environmental battle, also could get hit with slowing Chinese demand for coal shipments.

The American coal industry, stung by a drop in U.S. demand, hopes to revive its fortunes by sending Rocky Mountain coal to Asia from proposed terminals near Bellingham and Longview, Wash.

But a recent report by Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs says this will be a transformational year for China, with its seaborne coal imports dropping for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and continuing to decline in the coming years. China’s own coal production has spiked, Goldman Sachs said, along with investment in Chinese railroads to move its coal.

China, with its cities shrouded in smog, also is trying to improve energy efficiency and diversify its fuel mix, including investments in nuclear energy and wind power, according to Goldman Sachs. Deutsche Bank also said in a report released this month that there are increasing signs of “softer Chinese coal demand growth going forward.”

The global German banking firm pointed to protests in China against coal-fired power plants and associated pollution. It also said urbanization of China’s interior means much of the future demand for coal will come closer to areas where China has its own mines and further from the coastal ports where America’s coal would be shipped.

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By Anna Vega

The company made plans to divest its solar business in October last year, after its investment in thermal solar installations company Solel from Israel proved unprofitable in a market heavily flooded by cheap Asian components.

There were talks with potential buyers, but they led nowhere. “There was no sign of a transaction which would have taken into account the interests of clients, staff, investors and the company itself in an adequate way,” Siemens said in a statement.

The winding down is to affect some 280 employees, mostly Israeli-based, and will come into full effect in spring 2014. Siemens CEO Peter Löscher purchased Solel in 2009, convinced the CSP sector would grow quickly and the investment would pay off, but instead it ended up costing Siemens about €1bn.

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Iran’s new president Hasan Rowhani said Monday that he will defend “Iranian people’s right to nuclear energy until the very end.”

Speaking at his first press conference since he was elected to the post, Rowhani set conditions for negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.

“US should end intervening in internal affairs of Iran and recognize officially the right to nuclear energy to negotiate with our country,” he said.

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By Stanley Reed

Last month, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, of Japan, and GDF Suez of France said they would join with Sempra Energy, based in San Diego, California, to build a $10 billion liquefied natural gas plant in Hackberry, Louisiana.

They joined several other non-U.S. companies, including Korea Gas and GAIL, a large Indian utility, in trying to lock up prospective U.S. exports of abundant, low-cost shale gas.

Current low prices may not be the only attraction. Jean-Marie Dauger, the executive vice president of GDF Suez’s gas business, said in an interview that the company was trying to gain access to the U.S. natural gas pricing process: Unlike prices in much of the rest of the world, U.S. prices are set by market forces.

“The U.S. market will bring not only diversity in terms of physical sources, but economy,” he said. “We don’t know what the price will be, but we know it will be a market and price structure that is not the same as elsewhere in the world.”

Unlike oil, which is a globally traded commodity, natural gas is priced depending on location and the arrangement under which it is sold.

In North America, gas is a traded commodity whose price is usually linked to benchmarks set at the Henry Hub, a meeting point of pipelines in Louisiana. In the rest of the world, gas prices are often indexed to oil products that gas might replace — a system that was developed to sell gas from the giant Groningen field in the Netherlands, in the 1960s.

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By Chip Cummins

Norwegian oil giant Statoil STL.OS -1.25% ASA said Wednesday it made a big discovery of light oil offshore Newfoundland, the latest find in Canada’s Atlantic region–a big and fast-growing petroleum play that’s often overshadowed by the country’s western oil-sands developments.

Statoil said it made a discovery of “light, high-quality oil” in the Flemish Pass Basin at its Harpoon prospect. The field is located about 300 miles northeast of St. John’s, the capital of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

“While it is still too early to determine Harpoon’s resource potential at this time, this is very encouraging for the area,” said Erik Finnstrom, Statoil’s senior vice president for North America.

Statoil made the find drilling in about 3,600 feet of water, about six miles from the company’s Mizzen discovery. Statoil estimates that field holds as much as 200 million barrels of oil–a significant new deposit discovered at a time when big energy companies have struggled to find them.

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas reserves would be exported, 13% less than the the Zemach Committee, tasked with exploring the issue, recommended.

Netanyahu said that the 60% of natural gas preserved for domestic use would serve Israel’s needs for the next 25 years.

The prime minister added that the “gift from nature” would bring Israel $60 billion over the next 20 years, with the state receiving 60% of export revenues.

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By Wenqian Zhu

Surging U.S. oil production and greater energy conservation are helping keep a lid on oil prices worldwide and may be limiting the sway OPEC holds over world markets.

U.S. oil output rose by 14% in 2012, BP reported last week in its annual statistical review. The million barrel-per-day jump in output was the largest increase for any country in 2012, and the fastest single year increase in U.S. history.

“The tidal wave of oil coming out of the United States helped to [quench] the market’s thirst,” said Blake Clayton, a Fellow for Energy and National Security at Council on Foreign Relations. “Tremendous increases in energy efficiency in the United States and Europe are helping to soften the market.”

Though currently teetering close to the $100-a-barrel mark, oil prices have not crossed the $100 line in over a year.

This isn’t to suggest OPEC is irrelevant — the cartel still controls the vast majority of world oil reserves. But “OPEC’s ability to keep prices at today’s levels could come under tremendous pressure,” said Clayton. “There is no guarantee that the triple-digit oil prices of the last few years will be the new normal in the decade to come.”

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By Razib Khan

The New York Times has a piece with the title A Rebel Filmmaker Tilts Conservative. What conservative tilt is being displayed here? It’s Pandora’s Promise, a film which serves as a sort apologia for nuclear power from environmentalists concerned about climate change. What confuses me is that I don’t understand the specifically conservative tilt here, as I have many friends who evince a nuclear-friendly tilt without seeming politically conservative. Perhaps a generation ago anti-nuclear sentiment was strongly ideological colored, but more recently there has been a boomlet on the enviro-Left in favor of nuclear energy.

The GSS has two variables which query this issue crossed with ideology rather well.

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Major international energy players are eyeing the opening up of Myanmar’s largely-untapped oil and gas sector.

The country is putting up for tender 30 unexplored oil and gas blocks off its coast and it has attracted interest from companies looking to diversify their energy sources.

But even as the Myanmar government seeks to unlock its energy resources, it also needs to ensure a constant supply of power to its people.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) suggested turning to the use of renewable energy like wind and solar power in the short term.

For 70 percent of Myanmar’s population who live in rural areas, having electricity is considered a luxury.

Energy has therefore been identified by an ADB report as one of the most pressing challenges for Myanmar.

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By Hiroko Tabuchi

Japan’s new nuclear regulator adopted a fresh set of safety guidelines on Wednesday, starting a process that could allow some of the country’s idled reactors to come back online early next year.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pushing to restart some of Japan’s 50 commercial reactors, all but two of which remain idle amid public anxiety over nuclear safety in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

To quell those concerns, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, set up last year, has been drawing up new safety standards that would better protect Japan’s commercial reactors from natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

The safety overhaul comes after a powerful earthquake and tsunami ravaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan in 2011, setting off multiple fuel meltdowns and forcing more than 100,000 people from their homes.

Under the new guidelines, nuclear plant operators must bolster their tsunami defenses and check for active earthquake faults under their plants. They must also set up emergency command centers and install filtered vents to help reduce the discharge of harmful radioactive substances from the reactors.

The country’s previous regulator was replaced after widespread outrage over its lax approach to safety, as well as its close industry ties.

The new regulator said it would start accepting applications on July 8 from power companies seeking to restart their reactors. Seven companies have said they will apply to restart a total of 13 reactors across Japan.

“We have reached a milestone” in nuclear safety, Shinichi Tanaka, the authority’s chairman, said Wednesday. He said the new guidelines brought Japan in line with the highest global safety standards for nuclear energy.

It will take “many months” for the authority to conduct the necessary checks and approve bringing the reactors back online, authority officials said. Local news reports said the approval process would take at least six months.

The new safety standards are legally binding, unlike previous guidelines, which were not backed up by law and were adopted by nuclear operators on a voluntary basis. They also address, for the first time, the possibility of severe accidents like the Fukushima meltdowns.

Separately, the nuclear regulator has been conducting studies of earthquake fault formations under six nuclear power plants across Japan. Last month, it concluded that a reactor in Tsuruga, in western Japan, stands above an active fault, a finding that could lead to the first permanent shutdown of a reactor since the disaster.

It remains unclear whether these standards go far enough to quell lingering public fears over nuclear power. In a poll of 1,781 people conducted by the Asahi Shimbun daily on June 8 and 9, 58 percent of respondents said they opposed restarting the country’s reactors, while just 28 percent said they approved. Separately, Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the Fukushima plant, reported on Wednesday that it had detected high levels of radioactive strontium in groundwater at the plant, raising the possibility that its storage tanks are leaking.

The authority’s meeting on Wednesday, which was open to the public, was disrupted several times by shouts of “Listen to the public!” and “No reactor restarts!” from the audience.

Still, the agency faces considerable pressure from Japan’s power industry, pronuclear businesses and Mr. Abe’s governing party to allow more reactors to restart. Japan relied on nuclear energy for about a third of its electricity needs before the disaster, and nuclear proponents argue that the ensuing energy shortfall and surging fuel import costs are hurting the economy.

Bringing the reactors back online would complete a reversal in Japan’s energy policy, driven by Mr. Abe, a supporter of nuclear power who took office late last year. His predecessors had committed to phasing out Japan’s nuclear power program by 2040. But a government energy paper released last week made no mention of that goal.

“The guidelines certainly go much further in addressing nuclear safety,” said Kazuhiko Kudo, a professor in nuclear safety engineering at Kyushu University. “They are especially potent in that they are legally binding.

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