2011

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. got the go-ahead from FERC Thursday to start up facilities that will enable it to provide interim firm transportation service to three shippers on its Northeast Supply Diversification (NSD) Project beginning Oct. 1, one month ahead of the in-service date for the entire project.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) said it met an industry-leading 30-minute response time criteria for handling natural gas leaks 85% of the time in August. The response time compares to a 58.4% result in August 2011. The San Francisco-based combination utility said it is now ranked in the top quartile for meeting benchmarking criteria established by the American Gas Association (AGA). PG&E applied a more stringent standard in seeking to meet the 30-minute response time, given that the industry and AGA use 60 minutes as the usual test of responsiveness, said a PG&E spokesperson. Executive Vice President Nick Stavropoulos said the utility is seeking to “ease any anxiety” for customers regarding leaking gas.

A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to enact a moratorium on natural gas drilling in West Virginia until the industry and regulators with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) meet several conditions.

The number of operating unconventional rigs increased by seven (1%) in the week ending Sept. 14 but was down significantly (140 rigs, or 14%) compared to last year, according to NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count.

It has been around for more than 30 years, long before the state’s current oil/gas boom, but North Dakota’s six months of confidentiality provided new wells is taking on greater interest in the midst of the competitive exploration and production (E&P) push throughout the industry.

Sugar Land, TX-based Santrol, a Fairmount Minerals company, now has five Eagle Ford Shale rail terminals to handle proppant used for hydraulic fracturing in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. By expanding to five Eagle Ford terminals, Santrol can ship more than one million tons of proppant per year throughout the formation, the company said. The terminals are supplying Santrol’s northern white frack sand and resin-coated proppants. “We have more terminals with more available rail car capacity than any other frack sand supplier in the region,” said Tom Bonno, Santrol terminal field service manager. The five terminals are located in: Alice, where there are two, Gardendale, Gonzales and San Antonio. All of the terminals operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

With heavy ramifications for Midcontinent energy infrastructure and eventual exports, the United States will find itself with oversupplies of both domestically produced liquids and crude oil from now through 2017, market consultant/analyst Rusty Braziel of RBN Energy LLC told a session of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) annual meeting in Denver earlier this month (Aug. 13-16).

Unconventional oil and gas drilling within the 13 plays tracked by NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count increased by one rig over the previous week to 890 rigs for the week ending Aug. 10. While some of the plays reporting increases or declines in activity were to be expected, others came as a bit of a surprise.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Michael Krancer said late last month he is “not convinced” that wastewater injection wells are an issue in the state, and said he disagreed with a state legislator’s plan to enact a two-year moratorium.