An investigation by the Railroad Commission of Texas found no safety violations related to a June explosion and fire along a 42-inch section of Energy Transfer Partners LP‘s Rich Eagle Ford Mainline (REM) in DeWitt County, TX, about 86 miles southeast of San Antonio (see Daily GPI, June 15). “The metallurgical lab investigation concluded that the pipeline rupture on the REM 42-inch pipeline system was due to a bending overload that placed the bottom of the pipeline in tension, causing a fracture to initiate and propagate along the weld from the bottom to the top,” the investigation report said. According to the report, about 134 MMcf of natural gas was released during the incident. Property damage (operator and private property) was estimated at about $500,000.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has denied a request for rehearing of its approval of non-free trade agreement (FTA) exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by Freeport LNG Expansion LP (FLEX) and affiliates [11-161-LNG]. The Sierra Club had sought rehearing of DOE’s Order 3357-B, which granted FLEX 0.4 Bcf/d of additional export authority to non-FTA countries from its Texas terminal, now under construction (see Daily GPI, Nov. 14, 2014). Among other things, Sierra Club had argued that the indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of LNG exports were not properly analyzed by DOE under the National Environmental Policy Act.