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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.

Nuclear Power’s Future May Hinge on Georgia Project

But something else is at stake with the reactors called Vogtle 3 and 4: the future of the American nuclear industry itself.

The Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta is using a new plant design, a new construction method and a new system of nuclear regulation for what the industry says is a faster, better and cheaper system that will lead the way for a new generation of reactors.

Until recently, a new reactor construction project had not been started in the United States for 30 years, and now Vogtle and a similar project in South Carolina, V.C. Summer 2 and 3, are supposed to provide the answer to nuclear power’s great questions: What does a new reactor cost? With the price of natural gas near historic lows, can it even be worthwhile?

As the current generation of reactors moves toward retirement, the two projects may be the industry’s last best hope.

“Everybody’s watching the construction of that plant,” said Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, speaking of Vogtle. Several association members are considering investing in a nearly identical plant proposed by Florida Power and Light in Miami. Mr. Moline said of Vogtle’s builders, led by Georgia Power, “If they can do it, that will be the model.”

And if they can’t, it could years before anybody thinks of trying again. The new designs are supposed to be 10 times less likely to have an accident and be easier to operate, but if they cannot be built roughly on time and on budget, then nuclear power will have trouble in the era of plentiful natural gas and emerging technologies like wind. Nuclear power could become a bypassed technology — like moon landings, Polaroid photos and cassette tapes.

Executives at Southern Company, Georgia Power’s corporate parent, say they are eager for the challenge. “It takes leadership to do something like this,” said Joseph A. Miller, known as Buzz, Southern’s vice president for nuclear development.

Southern, one of the biggest utilities in the United States, raced to grab incentives offered by Congress to restart the nuclear construction business and to try out a licensing system devised by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to avoid a repeat of the experience of the 1970s and ‘80s.

In those decades parts of plants were built, ripped out and rebuilt because of design and regulatory problems, leading to ruinous costs. Examples sit across the muddy construction site: Vogtle 1 and 2, which opened in 1987 and 1989, cost $8.87 billion. When they were proposed in 1971 the estimated cost was $660 million.

For Vogtle 3 and 4, the company submitted a license application with a design described as nearly complete and received an operating license when construction had barely started, contingent on building exactly what it said it would.

The older plants, in contrast, were built by welders and pipe fitters and electricians who were working from incomplete plans that were conflicting, vague or inadequate to meet regulatory standards.

In a second innovation, Southern chose a system in which large sections of the plant would be prefabricated in multiton sections, shipped to the site and welded together into gigantic modules, then loaded into place by the world’s largest crane.

But with construction now roughly one-third complete, it is clear that much is not going as planned, and that the schedule — which is closely linked to cost because of growing interest expense on the incomplete asset — has slipped by at least 14 months and possibly more.

Still, all is not lost. Some of the changes since the company committed to the project seven years ago have helped it along; interest rates are at historic lows and the price for labor and materials has been held down by recession.

Square Feet: Ambitious Paris Project Takes Shape in the Suburbs

In response, the city government has begun an ambitious program of large-scale, mixed-use developments on the periphery. The goals are twofold: creating an engine for economic growth while preserving the Belle Époque Paris beloved by tens of millions of tourists; and integrating the prosperous city with struggling inner-ring suburbs, or banlieues.

Though France, and much of Europe, remains mired in economic malaise, one such development, the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris, is gaining momentum this year after more than a decade of planning.

The first residents moved in last fall, the second phase of a much-loved and much-needed park is close to completion, an office complex that will be owned by the New York real estate company Tishman Speyer is seeking tenants, and site preparation is nearly done for a soaring courthouse designed by Renzo Piano’s studio that will be one of the tallest buildings in Paris.

Mr. Piano first made his mark in Paris with the radical Pompidou Center in the mid-1970s. He acknowledged that the courthouse and the Clichy Batignolles project were taking Paris in a different direction — but a necessary one, he argued in an interview at his Paris workshop.

“We are celebrating a shift in the history of the town,” he said. “We are bringing the fertilizing elements to the periphery. You are changing something, and changing something is not easy.”

By the numbers, the 133-acre project is impressive for any city: 12,700 projected jobs; 3,400 housing units, subsidized and market-rate; 1.5 million square feet of office space; 410,000 square feet of public facilities, including schools; 334,000 square feet of shops and services — and 90 courtrooms and offices to accommodate some 8,000 people a day in the 524-foot-tall courthouse.

Garbage and recyclables will be collected with a system of pneumatic tubes, sharply cutting emissions and odors. Buildings with “green” roofs with vegetation, slabs of photovoltaic cells and geothermal heating point to an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality.

The project will offer commuters and residents a range of transportation options, including two new Metro stations, an extension of the tramway that nearly circles the city, a regional rail station and a 600-space underground parking garage.

But Paris being Paris, the prospect of high-rise offices, glossy apartment blocks and a large influx of low-income housing has not been received with great enthusiasm.

Brigitte Kuster, the maire, or mayor, of the 17th Arrondissement, protested that the area already had a large amount of subsidized housing, said Hubert Jamault, her chief of staff. Ms. Kuster, he said, “is not against the construction of social housing, but she does not want all the difficulties to be concentrated in the same place.”

Now, he said, after a petition drive, appeals to the city council and “numerous” public meetings with the city, her concerns have largely been addressed.

The decision to allow buildings up to 50 meters tall (about 160 feet) “has been the subject of a broad dialogue with local residents,” said Anne Hidalgo, a deputy mayor of Paris and a champion of the project. (The courthouse is an exception.)

Ms. Hidalgo, a leading candidate for mayor in elections next year, said the height of the buildings would be in proportion to the park — similar to Central Park in New York — and would allow for innovative architecture, and views and light for inhabitants.

“I’m quite happy with the results,” Ms. Hidalgo said via e-mail, “which offer Paris a new neighborhood that is ecological, a pleasant place to live, innovative in all ways, very Parisian, and resolutely turned toward the future.”

Clichy Batignolles, named for the adjoining neighborhoods, was first planned in 2001 under Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris and Ms. Hidalgo, said Didier Bailly, director general of Paris Batignolles Aménagement, the corporation formed to oversee much of the project.

In the subsequent years, transportation, housing and office components were added, and — reminiscent of the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan — the site became a centerpiece of Paris’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, which were captured by London.

By 2008, Mr. Bailly said, all the components of the project were in place with the deal to build the courthouse. That year, though, the persistent recession that the French call “la crise” struck.

“The crisis means that investors are extremely demanding,” Mr. Bailly said. “They have means, but they’re very attentive to how it’s invested; they want to ensure the safety of their investment.”

Some developers have delayed building in Clichy Batignolles, hoping that the market will improve. No large commercial tenants have yet committed to the project.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 22, 2013

Because of an editing error, a summary with an earlier version of this article misstated the size of the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris. It is 133 acres, not 154.

DealBook: 3 Foreign Companies Invest in U.S. Project to Export Liquid Gas

Michael Stravato for The New York TimesSempra plans to build a liquefied natural gas export facility at its existing terminal in Hackberry, La.

In a sign that the United States shale gas boom is making global waves, two Japanese conglomerates and a big French energy player signed agreements on Friday to invest up to $7 billion in a liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana.

The companies — Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Japan, and GDF Suez of France — each plan to take a 16.6 percent stake in the gas export plant being developed at Hackberry, La. The complex is being built by Sempra Energy, a company based in San Diego with annual revenue of about $10 billion. The companies agreed last year to help develop the project.

GDF Suez predicts that the plant will begin operations in 2017. The companies’ final decision to make their investment will depend on the project’s receiving necessary permits, GDF Suez said.

International companies, responding to a ravenous global appetite for natural gas, particularly in Japan and Europe, want access to shale gas from the United States, which has emerged as an important new source over the last few years. But because the United States has only recently shifted from being a gas importer to being self-sufficient in the fuel, the government has not yet agreed to allow exports except in a few cases and to the 20 countries with which it has free trade agreements, including Panama and Costa Rica.

Export approval, under consideration for several projects by the Energy Department, will be necessary before the potential of shale gas can be fully realized. On Friday, the department approved a Texas project called Freeport L.N.G. It has also signed off on a facility being built by Cheniere Energy at Sabine Pass in Louisiana that is expected to start exporting in 2015.

But international companies are investing all the same, betting that United States shale gas will eventually be able to go onto the global market.

In a statement, Sempra Energy estimated that the foreign partners would be putting up $6 billion to $7 billion in return for just under half the equity in the project, which is forecast to yield 12 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas annually for 20 years. In return, they will receive all the gas. Sempra will retain a stake of just over 50 percent.

‘‘These agreements represent a major step forward in the development of our L.N.G. export project,’’ Sempra’s president, Mark A. Snell, said in a statement.

For international players, the attractions of United States shale gas are the large potential volumes and the relatively low cost of extracting it.

Other foreign companies that have lined up American supplies include the Korean company Kogas, Sumitomo of Japan and BG Group, the British-based company that is a big player in the liquefied natural gas business.

Natural gas prices in the United States are now about $4 per million British thermal units, the industry’s standard measure. European-traded prices are in the $10 per million B.T.U.’s range, with Asian prices about $15 per million per B.T.U.’s. Long-term contract prices are often higher, and liquefication adds to the cost over plain gas.

Japan’s liquefied natural gas imports have surged after the shutdown of nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and were up by 11 percent last year. Japanese imports account for about one-third of the world’s total liquid gas market, according to a recent study by Bernstein research.

Japanese utility executives have said they want to reduce the prices they are paying by tying them to United States supplies.

‘‘It is a win-win situation,’’ said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer in New York. Such deals will help stabilize global fuel prices over the long term and benefit the United States economy, he said.

A big worry in the industry is whether United States’ exports could contribute to lower prices around the world, eroding profits. ‘‘It will give buyers a choice, something they have never had before,’’ said Jonathan Stern, chairman of the gas program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

But industry executives think that surging demand, especially from Asia, will easily absorb the exports that the United States government might eventually permit.

United States gas ‘‘won’t have a material effect on long-term pricing,’’ Martin Houston, BG’s chief operating officer, said in a recent presentation on the company’s Web site.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.

Woodside Petroleum Cancels Onshore L.N.G. Project in Australia

Global energy companies have invested $140 billion in six L.N.G. plants in just two and one-half years as Australia has increased production on its way to becoming the largest exporter of the gas in the world.

But investors’ interest in the sector in Australia has cooled recently because of huge costs overruns and in the face of rising competition from North America, where huge new supplies of gas have been tapped from shale.

Woodside’s canceled onshore project, called Browse, had been expected to export enormous amounts of liquified gas to Asia. The shelving of Browse as an onshore plant could spell an end to new onshore gas projects in Australia in favor of offshore plants that can be built at a lower cost and face fewer environmental and landowner hurdles.

“This decision will surprise few, as the proposed onshore development always looked too economically, technically, environmentally and socially risky for too little reward,” analysts at the bank Macquarie said in a research note.

Woodside also appears to be pivoting its focus toward North America, confirming Friday that it had lodged an expression of interest in developing a Canadian L.N.G. project.

Browse was to be Woodside’s biggest such onshore L.N.G. development yet, but it had been plagued by controversy over its proposed location at James Price Point on Australia’s northwest coast, coming under fire from environmentalists and some indigenous landowners.

The site is home to the world’s largest dinosaur footprints and sacred Aboriginal sites.

Peter Coleman, the chief executive of Woodside, said any new development would have to provide significant cost savings, adding: “Our customers are saying to us very clearly, ‘No longer can we pay for your expensive projects.”’

Many in the industry consider a floating L.N.G. plant to be the most likely fallback plan.

Analysts at JP Morgan have estimated that a floating project would mean a 20 percent saving in costs, resulting in a capital expenditure of $35.5 billion, versus $44.6 billion for the onshore development option.

Estimates of the cost of the onshore plant vary, but some analysts had said it could be as much as $48 billion.

Of seven L.N.G. plants under construction in Australia, all of which are due to come online in 2014 or later, four have already announced budget blowouts ranging from 15 percent to 40 percent.

Woodside owns a 31 percent stake in Browse, which it is developing with Royal Dutch Shell, BP, PetroChina, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Shares in Woodside, which has a market value of about $30 billion, rose 3 percent on expectations it would develop a less expensive option, but Chiyoda of Japan, which has a contract for the Browse project, tumbled 11 percent.

Building a floating plant in Asia and towing it into place off the coast of Western Australia would be likely to save billions of dollars in construction costs.

Earlier this month, Exxon Mobil and BHP Billiton disclosed plans to build the world’s largest floating L.N.G. vessel off northwestern Australia, producing six million to seven million tons of liquified gas per year, starting in 2020 or 2021.

Browse had been aiming for 12 million tons per year.

Shell, which owns 24 percent of Woodside, has not publicly supported a floating L.N.G. plant for Browse, but Ann Pickard, chairwoman of Shell Australia, has backed floating L.N.G. plants as a good solution for the problems with high costs in Australia.

Ms. Pickard has also championed the plants as a way for Australia to make revenues faster, though unions and politicians in Australia are worried about job losses from going offshore.

Another joint venture partner, PetroChina, said Friday that it was still deciding whether it would invest in Browse and that it was studying the project’s feasibility.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the decision had been a commercial one and was not the end of the nearly decade-long boom in resources in the country.

“We haven’t seen the peak of the investment phase into resources yet. And we are yet to see the peak of the production phase,” Mr. Gillard said in Sydney. “So we will be seeing the resources boom at work in our economy for a long time to come.”

Project Tests Boundaries of Public Access to Court Proceedings

A new Internet live streaming project in Massachusetts broadcast its first criminal trial this month, but it's still grappling with who can opt to stay off screen and why.