Ahead

Saying it is “a great time to be a Pennsylvanian,” Gov. Tom Corbett thanked the oil and natural gas industry for bringing thousands of jobs to his state and predicted an even brighter future as he kicked off the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Shale Gas Insight 2012 Conference in Philadelphia on Thursday.

Market dynamics will override politics and the job creation and economic stimulus effects of the gas industry will prevail in the years ahead regardless of the outcome of this fall’s presidential election, according to panelists at the LDC Gas Forum’s Midcontinent meeting in Chicago Monday.

Workers have returned to most oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), but more than a quarter of natural gas production that was shut-in ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Isaac last week remained shuttered Wednesday, according to the Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

FERC Friday gave Dominion Transmission Inc. (DTI) the go-ahead to place into service its Appalachian Gateway pipeline, which will loosen a bottleneck to allow for the transportation of shale and conventional natural gas production from West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania to growing markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The facilities were to begin service on Saturday (Sept. 1), said DTI spokesman Dan Donovan.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) the go-ahead to place into service the remaining facilities that are part of the first phase of its 225,000 Dth/d expansion of its system to serve growing natural gas markets in the Southeast. The Phase I project, which would add 95,000 Dth/d, is scheduled to begin service this month. Construction of Phase II, which would add 130,000 Dth/d, is expected to go into service in June 2013. Transco has estimated the capital cost of the project at $217 million. The Mid-South Expansion Project consists of five loops totaling 23 miles of new pipeline. The facilities in the first phase that were approved for service include three loops in Randolph County, AL; and Gaston County and Davidson County, NC, as well as modifications to existing compressor stations in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina [CP11-18]. Transco said it has entered into binding precedent agreements for 100% of the incremental firm transportation service to be provided by the project (see NGI, May 31, 2010).

FERC has given Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) the go-ahead to place into service the remaining facilities that are part of the first phase of its 225,000 Dth/d expansion of its system to serve growing natural gas markets in the Southeast region.

The cash market retreated on average by 6 cents Thursday as traders elected to do their deals ahead of the release of important government inventory figures. Eastern and Northeast points took the biggest hits as forecasters were calling for unseasonably cool weather to infiltrate the Midwest and Ohio Valley, while losses in California were limited as a heat wave was expected to stay through the weekend..

FERC Tuesday gave the go-ahead for UGI LNG Inc., a subsidiary of Pennsylvania midstream operator UGI Energy Services Inc., to place into service the expansion of its Temple liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Berks County, PA.

Natural gas will cut a stronger profile at home and abroad during the years ahead, and the United States will benefit from that, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson said during a presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City Wednesday.