Although many large engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC, firms in the petroleum sector are still building backlog and revenues on international jobs, traditional upstream and downstream opportunities in the U.S. remain largely in a slump. Still, many U.S.-based firms are bullish on work in Canada and South America.Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp. is near the end of a strong streak of U.S. refinery work won in recent years, including a $3.8-billion job for BP America at its Whiting, Ind., refinery, $1.6 billion in work in Detroit for Marathon Oil and $1.2 billion for two projects in Texas and Louisiana for
PHOTO COURTESY OF London Array Ltd. Competition in New England and revived interest in Texas are perking up wind market. Government streamlining of leases for Rhode Island and Massachusetts and changing market conditions in Texas are breathing new life into offshore wind projects in those states.On Aug. 18, Winchester, Mass.-based Neptune Wind announced it plans to develop, construct and operate a 500-MW wind farm about 20 nautical miles south of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. The announcement came a day after U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation
Routine work on a substation apparently led to a power outage that left more than 1.4 million customers – about 5 million people – without power for 12 hours Sept. 8 and 9 in Southern California,Arizona and Mexico.According to the Arizona Public Service, the outage began about 3:30 p.m. PDT Thursday when a major 500-kV line from Arizona to Southern California tripped off. The outage forced the automatic shut down of the San Onofre Generating Station, a nuclear powerplant. The powerplant and power imported from Arizona on the 500-kV line are the region’s primary sources of power. Without that electricity,
On Aug. 26, the U.S. State Dept. issued the final environmental impact statement on TransCanada’s 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, setting the final stage for the hotly contested battle over the line that would move Canadian tar-sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico for refining.
Utilities up and down the East Coast were rapidly making progress on restoring power to the up to 7.5 million homes and businesses that were reported without electricity after Hurricane Irene struck over the weekend.No major damage was reported at East Coast power plants, but Constellation’s Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear Unit #1 remained shut down after a piece of aluminum siding struck a transformer there. All nuclear plants in the path of the storm continued operating or safely shutdown in advance of the storm, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Connecticut Light & Power reported having record outages in
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday to complete construction of the mothballed 1,200-MW Bellefonte nuclear unit 1 over the objections of environmentalists who said that it is unsafe to complete the unit, which has been dormant since 1988.“You’re forcing questionable technology into an old, aging facility,” said John Noel, of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy at the meeting on Thursday. But board members said their concerns had been alleviated after TVA staff and executives assured them the unit would undergo rigorous inspections and have to meet the latest standards and regulations.TVA estimates it will cost
Courtesy FERC FERC Order 1000 requires providers in neighboring transmission planning regions to coordinate on finding cost-effective solutions to mutual transmission needs. Related Links: Power Producers Validate One Bright Spot in Midyear Outlook FERC Floats Rule Changes To Promote Transmission A July 21 ruling by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that reforms electric-transmission planning and allocation requirements is expected to support new solar- and wind-power development, according to two construction industry sources.“FERC Order 1000 is a huge development that will open up the transmission cost allocation process and spur development of transmission projects,” says Gerald Schulz, vice president of electrical
Related Links: Drilling for Treasure Hydrofracking and Water: No Place for Secrecy A Dept. of Energy advisory panel says that it accepts the “prevailing” view that hydraulic fracturing for shale gas is unlikely to contaminate drinking water sources, but called for the government and industry to take steps to ensure that the gas is retrieved in a way that minimizes negative environmental impacts. In draft recommendations released on August 11, the Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board called for industry leadership in improving environmental performance, underpinned by strong regulations and rigorous enforcement of those regulations.The subcommittee was
Rendering courtesy of Enviromission The temperature differential between greenhouse-heated air at ground level and the air atop the tower creates a tremendous updraft that drives turbines to generate 200 MW of electricity. Rendering courtesy of Enviromission The solar tower's design does not require any water during the power production cycle, an attractive quality in the desert Southwest. A solar tower planned to rise just 100 ft shy of the world's tallest building took a major step forward with the selection of Phoenix-based contractor Hensel Phelps Construction Co. as construction services provider under a guaranteed maximum price.EnviroMission USA, a subsidiary of
The Dept. of Energy on August 5 finalized a $967-million loan guarantee to Agua Caliente Solar LLC for a 290-MW solar facility being built in Yuma, Ariz., by NRG Solar, Princeton, N.J.The Agua Caliente solar project will deploy fault ride-through and dynamic voltage regulation, technologies that are new to photovoltaic solar powerplants and which are expected to improve the reliability and predictability of the electricity supplied to the electricity grid.