Rich Nemec

Compressed natural gas (CNG) will be used to haul supplies of diesel fuel and gasoline under a partnership between Newport Beach, CA-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. and energy supply/logistics company Mansfield Energy Corp.

An open season earlier this year has failed to generate enough interest to move forward with a major natural gas pipeline project from the Bakken to an interconnection in northwest Minnesota, an executive with a unit of Bismarck, ND-based MDU Resources Group told an analysts’ day meeting Wednesday in Las Vegas, NV.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) dropped a grenade on state regulators Monday, admitting a number of inappropriate contacts between utility and regulatory staff over the past five years. The initial fallout has cost the jobs of three PG&E executives and a top aide to the state’s chief regulator, Michael Peevey, who himself has been accused of violating ex-parte rules.

Deep wastewater injection from the oil/natural gas sector is most likely responsible for the sharp increase in the number of small earthquakes recorded since 2001 in the Colorado-New Mexico border area, according to a study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).

The compressed natural gas (CNG) “pipeline on wheels” is about to get rolling in the hard-to-serve hamlets of Nova Scotia, and a place called Antigonish is bidding to become the first community in the province to use CNG to serve its homes and small businesses.

The vision of natural gas becoming more of a player in a broadening alternative transportation fuel sector moved a little closer to reality in recent days with technology, marketing and research funding advances.

In the face of a deluge of national and state studies related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the American Petroleum Institute (API) has established a new “community standard” to encourage sustained interaction between oil/natural gas operators and the communities in which they do business over the full lifecycle of drilling projects.

Production in North Dakota’s robust Bakken/Three Forks shale plays continues to ramp up, while prices for the state’s sweet, light crude oil have fallen 18% since June, prompting the chief oil/natural gas regulator to predict a Bakken benchmark price will evolve in time for the state’s 2015-17 budgeting cycle.

The Western Governors’ Association (WGA) on Thursday launched a regional drought forum to examine the lingering impacts of the acute western dry spell on four major areas.