Rich Nemec

Concerns about activity on Native American reservation lands and a major processing plant’s bottleneck kept North Dakota’s wellhead associated natural gas flaring from falling in June, and the state’s top oil/gas regulator expressed some frustration Friday about that in reporting a 5% uptick in oil and gas production for the most recently completed reporting period, June.

Bakken crude oil rail shipments traverse 32 of North Dakota’s 53 counties on a weekly basis, and some counties have up to 45 crude-bearing trains pass through their boundaries weekly, according to a white paper released Thursday by an analyst at Genscape, the commodity and energy markets data gathering firm.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., still facing multi-billion-dollar penalties for its natural gas system safety lapses, was granted a 2014 general rate increase of $460 million, or 6.9% above current rates, by California regulators Thursday with heavy implications for its current and future safety programs. This case is separate from still-pending pipeline penalty cases (see Daily GPI, May 7, 2013).

A combination of coal’s retreat in power generation and booming natural gas supplies led by U.S. shales is driving up the market for natural gas and steam turbines worldwide, according to a report from the global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan (F&S).

Utah-based natural gas vehicle (NGV) fueling station developer/operator BluLNG has launched a gas recapture system for its compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) stations at an existing facility in Nampa, ID.

As California’s new state rules (SB 4) for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) continue to unwind (see Shale Daily, June 18), the state’s richest oil-producing area, Kern County, at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, is in the process of launching its own detailed review of fracking, mirroring an already challenging effort at the statewide level.

As another one of the negative twists in the nearly four-year-old saga of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and the fatal September 2010 natural gas transmission pipeline rupture in San Bruno, CA, the consumer watchdog The Utility Reform Network (TURN) on Tuesday charged both the utility and state regulators with malfeasance in handling the aftermath of the tragedy.

As the industry moves along its steep learning curve dealing with the shale revolution, it is becoming clearer there is no real comparison between California’s Monterey Shale and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. They are night-and-day opposites, according to several industry speakers at a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) conference Tuesday in Los Angeles.

The natural gas vehicle (NGV) sector is taking a couple of steps to boost its Internet presence. NGVAmerica has launched a new website with what its officials are promoting as a better look with more extensive information about NGVs (ngvamerica.org). Separately, the Natural Gas Vehicle Institute (NGVi) is adding two new e-learning options to its Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Fueling Training program. The online courses are geared to complement NGVi’s classroom equivalents on CNG fueling station design and CNG station operation/maintenance. Both classes are available for business groups wanting computer-based training.