ENI of Italy Considers Large Gas Project in Mozambique

The companies will likely publish documents in the next few days soliciting interest from international contractors in the project, according to an oil industry official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Groups led by ENI and Anadarko Petroleum, the independent American producer, have made major gas discoveries in two separate blocks in the waters off Mozambique in recent years. If the oil companies succeed in exporting the gas in the quantities they have discussed, Mozambique would become one of the world’s gas powers. Much of the gas, which would be supercooled and exported on ships as liquefied natural gas, is likely to go to India and other Asian countries, which are easy sailing distance from Mozambique in East Africa.

Thomas Longford, a banker at UBS, which has been involved in sales of stakes in the Mozambique discoveries, said on Wednesday at the Oil and Money Conference in London that all of the gas was likely to be sold at premium oil-indexed prices. The International Herald Tribune, owned by The New York Times Co., is one of the conference’s organizers.

ENI and Anadarko are in the early stages of designing an onshore liquefied natural gas facility in a remote area called Afungi in Cabo Delgado Province in the northern part of Mozambique. The facility will use gas from the fields in their two blocks that are geologically connected.

The onshore LNG plant is likely to be one of the largest in the world with, over time, at least 10 units, with a capacity of five million metric tons each. The potential floating operation would be a small fraction of the size, but it reflects a major new push by the industry to find cheaper and more efficient ways to produce the natural gas that is locked under the sea in remote areas.

Although building the onshore facility is considered relatively simple from a technical point of view, the location in Mozambique, which until now has only had a small oil and gas industry, will create many obstacles.

All of the equipment and a wide range of skilled personnel would need to be brought into the country and to the site, which is not served by roads. The resettlement of about 3,000 people living in the area would also need to be negotiated. About 10,000 workers would be on the site at the peak of the construction phase.

If things go smoothly, ENI and Anadarko expect gas to begin flowing around the end of 2018. Total development costs for the drilling and onshore export facilities are estimated to be around $50 billion.

A floating facility costing several billion dollars would provide ENI with an alternative export route that evades a lot of onshore hurdles. In floating LNG, the gas goes directly from the wells to the vessel, which is a very large boat bristling with processing equipment. ENI would export from the southern part of its block known as Area 4.

ENI is considering a 2.5 million metric ton per year facility. ENI’s partners include CNPC and GALP of Portugal.

A floating plant “could offer an earlier route to initial but smaller scale monetization while the larger and more complex land site is developed,” said Peter Hutton, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is that the boat and its gear could be built in a world-class shipyard, rather than in a difficult location like Mozambique. For example, Royal Dutch Shell is building such a vessel for its Prelude project off Western Australia in South Korea. Prelude is likely to be the world’s first operating floating LNG facility.

Shell, which wants to roll out a floating LNG vessel every year, would like to participate in Mozambique, but it has so far been unable to find a stake for sale at a price it considers reasonable. Last year, Shell was outbid for Cove Energy, which had a stake in Anadarko’s area, by PTT Exploration and Production of Thailand.

Judge Considers Limits on Apple’s Future E-Book Deals

In a sometimes testy hearing in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan, Judge Denise L. Cote said that she was considering a plan in which Apple would negotiate contracts with publishers in a staggered fashion — possibly six to eight months apart — to prevent them from engaging in another price-fixing conspiracy.

Judge Cote ruled in July that Apple colluded with publishers to raise the price of e-books before the introduction of its iPad in 2010. Those charges were brought against Apple and five major publishers by the Justice Department in 2012. The publishers all settled, but Apple held out and went to trial.

The judge’s proposal was a scaled-back version of the guidelines put forth by the government last week, when it suggested that Apple be forced to end its agreements with the five settling publishers and avoid entering similar agreements with producers of movies, TV and music. Apple responded by calling the proposal a “draconian and punitive intrusion” into its business.

The publishers who settled also objected to the Justice Department’s proposed remedy, saying that it would fundamentally change their existing settlements.

In court on Friday, Judge Cote said that she wanted an injunction to be tailored so that it would encourage innovation in a rapidly changing e-book business and yet prevent collusion on price in the future.

“I have no desire to regulate the App Store,” she said.

But Judge Cote also slammed the publishers for lacking “contrition” and said that she feared future collusion in the e-book market. Although the publishers eventually agreed to settlements, none of them admitted wrongdoing.

Judge Cote said that the publishers had played “a rough and tumble game” and engaged in “blatant price fixing.”

“None of the publisher defendants have expressed any remorse,” she said. “They are, in a word, unrepentant.”

Lawyers for Apple and the government said in court that they would meet in the next week and discuss the judge’s proposal. Another hearing is expected later this month.

Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster settled in April 2012; Penguin Group USA and Macmillan settled later. Penguin has since merged with Random House, which was not named in the lawsuit.

Court Considers if Inmate's Sex Reassignment Poses Security Risk

A federal appeals court heard debate Tuesday about the potential for security problems if prison officials follow a Boston federal judge's order to provide sex reassignment surgery to a convicted murderer diagnosed with severe gender identity disorder.

GSN Considers Adding Church-Based Dating Show

At an “upfront” breakfast in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning, GSN outlined its plans for the 2013-14 television season, a season that is being reshaped by the popularity of “The American Bible Challenge,” which was introduced during the 2012-13 season and is already back for a second go-round.

Still, GSN executives told reporters they were not planning on creating a channel dominated by faith-based programming. The network, they said, will continue to offer viewers secular shows like “Baggage”; “Family Feud,” in a new iteration with Steve Harvey as the host; “Minute to Win It,” which will have its debut on June 25 with original episodes and a new host, the Olympian Apolo Anton Ohno; and “The Newlywed Game,” also in a new iteration, with Sherri Shepherd as the host.

“We still need to be a broad-based channel,” said Amy Introcaso-Davis, executive vice president for programming and development at GSN.

Even so, the success of “The American Bible Challenge,” hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, is hard to ignore.

“Literally, it put us ahead of the game in the year’s most talked-about programming trend,” Ms. Introcaso-Davis said, referring to the renewed interest among viewers in programming with religious themes like “The Bible,” the miniseries on the History Channel.

“The American Bible Challenge” is the most-watched series in GSN’s history, Ms. Introcaso-Davis said, and “in general, it doubles” the ratings “of anything we’ve ever done.”

The increased viewership for the Bible game show, along with more conventional shows like “Family Feud,” helped GSN’s ratings grow among adults ages 18 to 49 as well as adults ages 25 to 54.

And GSN is enjoying “much greater interest from the advertising community,” said John Zaccario, executive vice president for advertising sales, adding that he and his colleagues had “signed over 100 new advertisers.”

The proposed dating show with a religious setting, called “It Takes a Church,” will ask congregations, pastors, friends and family to find a suitable potential mate for a parishioner who is single. Plans call for hourlong episodes if it becomes a series.

The show is a contemporary version of how “the ladies of the church are always trying to fix up the few single” parishioners, Ms. Introcaso-Davis said, and would be “aimed specifically at that new audience” that has been brought to GSN by “The American Bible Challenge.”

“It Takes a Church” is one of six original series in development at GSN, which, like most cable channels, is trying to significantly increase the amount of original programming on its schedule to woo additional viewers and advertisers.

The other series being considered by GSN include:

¶ Another dating show, “Where Have You Been All My Life,” which asks a contestant to evaluate three potential suitors based on information about their pasts, using sources like photographs and video clips.

¶ “Dance Rivals,” about two dance studios in Orem, Utah, that compete fiercely against each other, which includes as an executive producer Derek Hough, a professional dancer in the cast of “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. (“Dance Rivals” is in the vein of the handful of reality series that GSN schedules, which executives refer to as “real-life games.”)

¶ “The Imposter,” which asks two contestants to live with a family for 48 hours and figure out which family member is a fake, planted by the producers. The contestant who identifies the imposter wins $25,000; if the imposter is not found, the family wins the cash.

GSN is ordering two game shows as series. One is the new version of “Minute to Win It” with Mr. Ohno; GSN showed reruns of episodes of the original version, hosted by Guy Fieri, after they appeared on NBC.

The other show being ordered by GSN is “The Chase,” based on a popular British quiz show that pits four contestants against a cast member known as the Beast — a know-it-all who seeks to answer questions faster and more accurately than the contestants can.

GSN is ordering eight hourlong episodes of “The Chase,” which will make its American debut later this year.

GSN is the most recent in a roster of cable channels that have made or are planning to make their 2013-14 upfront presentations, so called because the events take place before the start of the coming TV season.

The lengthy schedule of presentations is to conclude during the week of May 13 when the big broadcast networks, along with Spanish-language networks and channels, make their presentations.