Cove Point LNG Project Approved

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.

Construction of the Dominion Resources liquefied natural gas export project in Cove Point was approved by US federal regulators on Monday, reports Reuters. It will export up to 5.75 million metric tons of LNG a year when fully operational. Construction is estimated to cost between $3.4 billion and $3.8 billion and the company said it has fully subscribed the marketed capacity of the project with 20-year service agreements for LNG shipments to Japan and India. The project has drawn fire from neighborhoods and environmental groups. Cove Point is six miles across the mouth of the Patuxent River from Cedar Point on the Naval Air Station: Patuxent River.

Boeing announced this week that it would move the majority of its defense services and support work out of Washington state to other US cities, including Patuxent River, MD, according to Reuters. The moves affects about 2,000 of its defense employees and reflects Boeing’s effort to streamline its defense business. Among the programs shifting to other cities are services and support work for the Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) program, as well as the F-22 fighter jet, which Boeing built with Lockheed Martin.

With the Defense Health Agency’s first anniversary, Washington Technology reports, the overhaul of DoD’s huge military health system is taking on  some of the biggest health IT projects the military has ever seen.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier helped rescue two fishermen off the coast of Florida, reports Navy Times. The Navy says the fishermen took to their life raft after unsuccessfully fighting an electrical fire aboard their vessel.

Potential across-the-board DoD spending cuts next year could be problematic as the US battles ISIS, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) reports The Hill. Sequestration could force the Pentagon to cut $50 billion from its budget next year.

The Pentagon is taking initial steps to boost cybersecurity accountability, reports Inside Cybersecurity. The Navy’s failure to clearly define its cybersecurity workforce and lack of controls were cited as examples of the challenges involved.

Federal agencies doubled the percent of their IT budgets allocated for cloud services: from 1 percent to 2 percent in two years. The Government Accountability Office says that’s not enough, reports the FederalTimes.

More women were hired by the federal government in 2000 than in 2012, says a report from the Merit Systems Protection Board, according to Defense One. Part of the decrease is an unintended consequence of the push to hire veterans. As of March 2014, women made up about 44 percent of the federal workforce while 45 percent of the federal workforce was female in 2000.

Government Executive reviews options to fix the broken security clearance process. About 5.1 million individuals hold security clearances, about 40 percent of whom never access classified information. The federal government spent about $11.6 billion on its security classification and clearance system in fiscal 2013.

Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training, Owego, New York, is being awarded $6,861,233 for delivery order 4007 against a previously issued Basic Ordering Agreement (N00019-14-G-0019) for non-recurring engineering efforts for the integration of the Digital Rocket Launcher capabilities updates into the MH-60R and MH-60S avionics software. Work will be performed in Owego, New York (95 percent), and Patuxent River, Maryland (5 percent), and is expected to be completed in July 2016. Fiscal 2014 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $2,600,000 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.