Maciej Janiec

Natural-gas giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. is seeking to raise at least $10 billion this year, $3 billion more than previously announced, as the company tries to shore up its balance sheet and pay for new oil fields amid the lowest natural-gas prices in a decade. The company said Monday it is exploring a sale of all or part of its holdings in aging but still lucrative oil-and-gas fields in the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico, and it hopes to sell a stake in an oil-rich zone in Oklahoma. Though it hasn't completed any of these transactions, the Oklahoma City-based company estimates they could help raise up to $12 billion. Chesapeake, the nation's second-largest gas producer after Exxon Mobil Corp., said in January that it planned to raise $7 billion to bridge the gap between the cash it generates through operations and the amount it plans to spend on drilling and paying down debt. Last month, Chesapeake said it would cut back on natural-gas production and shift rigs to hunt... - Maciej Janiec

A new liquefied natural gas fueling station built, owned and operated by Clean Energy Fuels Corp., has opened in Seville, Ohio. The station will support the expanding fleet of LNG trucks deployed by Dillon Transport serving Owens Corning and is also available for public access. A grant to help fund the development of the Clean Energy LNG station was awarded to Clean Fuels Ohio by the U.S. Department of Energy, as part of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus program. "The opening of this new Clean Energy LNG truck fueling station, the first in the industrial heartland of America, is a major step toward realizing our program to create a national LNG fueling infrastructure that will extend along major truck routes nationwide," says James Harger, chief marketing officer for Clean Energy. "Our efforts to create America's Natural Gas Highway are in direct response to the increasing demand for natural gas fuel as major trucking companies secure and deploy LNG-powered... - Maciej Janiec

The use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a potential replacement for conventional bunker fuels has become an increasingly discussed topic within the shipping industry. (...) 2012-02-10: 97.5% of LNG professionals surveyed says LNG will 'come to fruition' as fuel for ships. - Maciej Janiec

Indonesian liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers are ready to take advantage of falling gas prices in the US, following a boom in shale gas development that has boosted the country’s gas supply in the past several years. “We’re basically very interested in importing LNG from the US, however we need the gas from next year, while most of the US producers will only start deliveries in 2018”. - Maciej Janiec

Once upon a time US energy companies decided to build liquid natural gas facilities on the US coastline. These were not export production facilities, they were import receiving facilities. It was believed that while natural gas was in abundant supply in the US, one day demand would outstrip supply and thus imported LNG would be needed. Today there is talk of converting those LNG facilities so that LNG can be exported, not imported. And where to? China of course, and the rest of Asia. (...) Now the northern hemisphere has been hit with an unusually mild winter. Americans may not be able to fathom the concept of running eighteen-wheelers on gas, but they are very familiar with gas home heating. Given far less than typical demand, US gas storage has reached record levels. Even if temperatures were to fall to average for the rest of the winter, notes Citi, inventories would be sufficient to carry through the summer, thus making summer gas production redundant. The way things are going,... - Maciej Janiec

Retail gasoline deliveries, already well below 1980 levels, have absolutely fallen off a cliff. Is the plunge inventory-related, i.e. are storage facilities so full that retailers are simply putting off deliveries? In 2010, gasoline deliveries declined to the low 40s--literally falling off the charts. In November 1983, deliveries were 51.1 MGD; in November 2010, they were 42.8 MGD, and in November 2011 they were 30.9 MGD (a decline of 47%). - Maciej Janiec

These glasses, we heard, have a front-facing camera used to gather information and could aid in augmented reality apps. It will also take pictures. The spied prototype has a flash —perhaps for help at night, or maybe it is just a way to take better photos. The camera is extremely small and likely only a few megapixels. The heads up display (HUD) is only for one eye and on the side. It is not transparent nor does it have dual 3D configurations, as previously speculated. - Maciej Janiec

In India, electricity from solar is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. The news - which will boost India's "Solar Mission" to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 - could have implications for other developing nations too. Recent figures from market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) show that the price of solar panels fell by almost 50 per cent in 2011. They are now just one-quarter of what they were in 2008. That makes them a cost-effective option for many people in developing countries. In India, electricity from solar supplied to the grid has fallen to just 8.78 rupees [$0.18] per kilowatt-hour compared with 17 rupees for diesel. The drop has little to do with improvements in the notoriously poor efficiency of solar panels: industrial panels still only convert 15 to 18 per cent of the energy they receive into electricity. But they are now much cheaper to produce, so inefficiency is no longer a major sticking point. The one thing stopping households... - Maciej Janiec

Currently being developed by DARPA researchers at Washington-based Innovega iOptiks are contact lenses that enhance normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images without the need for bulky apparatus. Instead of oversized virtual reality helmets, digital images are projected onto tiny full-color displays that are very near the eye. These novel contact lenses allow users to focus simultaneously on objects that are close up and far away. This could improve ability to use tiny portable displays while sill interacting with the surrounding environment. - Maciej Janiec

Thomay Frey: Yesterday I was honored to be one of the featured speakers at the TEDxReset Conference in Istanbul, Turkey where I predicted that over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030 (roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet). 1.) Power Industry Jobs Going Away - Power generation plants will begin to close down. - Coal plants will begin to close down. - Many railroad and transportation workers will no longer be needed. - Even wind farms, natural gas, and bio-fuel generators will begin to close down. - Ethanol plants will be phased out or repurposed. - Utility company engineers, gone. - Line repairmen, gone. New Jobs Created - Manufacturing power generation units the size of ac units will go into full production. - Installation crews will begin to work around the clock. - The entire national grid will need to be taken down (a 20 year project). Much of it will be recycled and the recycling process alone will employ many thousands of people. - Micro-grid operations will open in every... - Maciej Janiec

Published yesterday in Science and reported by the BBC, scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio have reported that, when given to mice with cognitive deficiencies due to amyloid buildup in the brain, bexarotene therapy cleared the amyloids within hours. As an added bonus, not only were the plaques cleared, but the mice began to show improvement in cognitive function. The implication of this is that those being treated for Alzheimer’s can regain some of their lost function. Despite the promising results and the drug’s availability as a cancer medication, it’s important to note that it is still too early to tell whether the drug will have the same effect in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Maciej Janiec

The FT reports that the commodities hedge fund industry has suffered its worst year in more than a decade as the sector’s top managers recorded heavy losses amid volatile markets. The average commodity hedge fund fell 1.7 percent in 2011, according to data sourced by the paper, the first loss since the index was created in 2000 and down from a rise of 10.7 percent in 2010. Meanwhile DE Shaw, founded by mathematician David Shaw, has seen its flagship Oculus fund return 18.5 percent this year, while Renaissance Technologies has seen its computer-driven institutional equities fund return 30 percent so far this year, and Quantitative Investment Management, achieved a return of 41.4 percent in the past 11 months. - Maciej Janiec

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest bank, said profit fell 76 percent in the fourth quarter as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis curbed trading. Net income fell to 147 million euros ($194 million) from 601 million euros a year earlier, the Frankfurt-based company said today in a statement. That missed the 556 million-euro average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The investment bank had a 422 million-euro pretax loss. The company has been a “big winner” in taking market share from rivals, and there’s an opportunity for more gains as changes in the industry, including tougher capital rules and a restriction on business models, create a “winnowing out” among financial firms. The company said Dec. 8 that it expected to plug the 3.2 billion-euro gap calculated by the European Banking Authority six months early, without saying how it will meet the goal. - Maciej Janiec

Scientists have reconstructed the words people hear by using a computer algorithm to decode electrical signals in the brain. The research is based on a study of only 15 people and the technique cannot yet read imagined speech. - Maciej Janiec