Acre

A member of the Pittsburgh City Council has introduced four proposed amendments to the city’s zoning code that would allow 40-acre minimum “mineral extraction districts” for Marcellus Shale drilling.

The Port of Corpus Christi (Texas) accepted a $7 million bid from Oxy Ingleside Property Holdings LLC, a unit of Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy), for a nearly 100-acre campus portion of the former U.S. Naval Station Ingleside (NSI). Oxy Ingleside currently has about 816 acres of the former NSI under purchase contract. The sale agreement for the campus portion will be presented for approval at the Port Commission meeting scheduled for Aug. 14. Occidental Chemical has operated a chemical plant at Ingleside since 1987. The campus portion is the third and final piece of the former naval base to be sold. Oxy has said it plans development of the base property in phased projects worth about $1 billion. Projects could include pipeline and barge facilities to handle liquefied petroleum gas produced from the Eagle Ford Shale; a liquefied natural gas facility also is possible, along with storage for crude oil, condensate and refined products, Oxy officials have told Ingleside City officials. An Oxy spokesman declined to provide further details. “The campus property complements the previous acquisition of the port property by Oxy Ingleside Property Holdings LLC [see Shale Daily, April 2], and we will investigate other uses for the property after closing, said spokesman Eric Moses.

Range Resources Corp. has drilled the first unconventional natural gas well in Crawford County, PA, and is reportedly planning to drill more of them targeting the Utica Shale in the near future.

Wyoming state investigators said Thursday a mechanical failure in the well was the main cause of a natural gas well blowout late in April at a Chesapeake Energy Corp. drilling site. However, operating errors also contributed. The incident lasted about three days; no one was injured (see Shale Daily, April 30).

An affiliate of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. on Tuesday took on Linn Energy LLC as a partner in an enhanced oil recovery project on the 22,000-acre Salt Creek Field of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

A proposed natural gas-fired repowering project, stalled in 2011, has been restarted by the California Energy Commission (CEC) for NRG Energy Inc.’s 100-acre Encina generation facility in Carlsbad, CA. NRG proposes to build a 558 MW gas-fired combined-cycle plant on part of the existing site (see Daily GPI, July 5, 2011; May 23, 2011). The CEC granted a motion from the Center for Biological Diversity to reopen the proceeding and hear new evidence about environmental concerns, which has been completed. NRG plans to build the $500 million gas-fired plant on 23 acres of the existing Encina site and to retire three existing steam boiler units when the Carlsbad Energy Center project becomes operational.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission on Tuesday approved a 30,000-acre single oil production unit in an area bounded by a state park and river in the west-central part of the state. The vote was unanimous to allow the atypically large production unit, which is intended to better protect the environment, a commission spokesperson told NGI’s Shale Daily.

SM Energy Co. intends “to pursue any and all legal remedies” arising from Endeavour International Corp.’s decision to terminate agreements to buy a 42,000-acre leasehold and associated pipeline assets in McKean and Potter counties in northern Pennsylvania, the Denver-based company said.

Endeavour International Corp. last Wednesday said it had terminated purchase and sale agreements with SM Energy Co. and other minority owners to buy a 42,000-acre leasehold and associated pipeline assets in McKean and Potter counties in northern Pennsylvania. SM Energy Co. responded with a threat of legal action.