Already

The near-record pace of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season already has the 15th named storm of the year charging across the Atlantic Ocean, and another six named storms are likely to form before the season’s official end on Nov. 30, according to forecasters at Andover, MA-based WSI. Corp.

Shale gas production is projected to increase to the point where it becomes the dominant domestic gas supply over the next two decades, but it brings with it the “greatest source of uncertainty” facing North American gas markets, according to the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions.

Anschutz Exploration Corp. has exited the Bakken Shale play after closing the sale of its remaining operated and nonoperated oil and gas producing properties in the Williston Basin, including undeveloped acreage, to an undisclosed Canadian oil company for $115 million. The deal comes less than a year after the company sold 180,000 net acres to Oxy USA in December 2010 for $1.4 billion.

Although there was only a fairly small return of heat in the Northeast Monday and some areas there were already due to start seeing high temperatures slacken again a few degrees Tuesday, Northeast citygates recorded most of the largest upticks of up to about 35 cents. One source suggested that Monday’s moderate temperature upticks may have spurred a little extra buying by Northeast traders to resolve unexpected Monday imbalances.

Less than a month after Australian energy giant BHP Billiton Ltd. disclosed plans to purchase Petrohawk Energy Corp., the Houston-based company announced Wednesday that 2Q2011 production grew 15% and revenues shot up 21% from the previous quarter, propelling the company to huge profits.

For the time being at least, Marcellus Shale producers are paying the price for too much of a good thing. Concentrated development in the nation’s preeminent shale gas play has made for basis-inverting constraints on Tennessee Gas Pipeline. However, the industry has seen this sort of thing before (in the Rockies more than once, for instance), and the market will work it out, eventually, a Marcellus producer told NGI’s Shale Daily.

Laser Northeast Gathering Company LLC broke ground on the New York portion of its proposed gathering system Wednesday and also announced a $60 million expansion of the Marcellus Shale midstream project.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line’s (Transco) proposed 142,000 Dth/d expansion, the Mid-Atlantic Connector (MAC), which calls for the construction of 42-inch diameter pipeline extending from Transco’s Compressor Station 185 in Prince William County, VA, to Fairfax County, VA; the abandonment and replacement of pipeline in Fairfax County; and the construction of a 3,550-hp internal combustion-driven compressor unit at Transco’s existing Compressor Station 165 in Pittsylvania County, VA [CP11-31]. Transco, a subsidiary of Williams Partners LP, also plans to install one 33,000-hp electric motor-driven compressor unit at its Compressor Station 175 in Fluvanna County, VA, and to abandon four 4,400-hp internal combustion-driven compressor units, leaving it with a net addition of 15,400 hp at Compressor Station 175. The pipeline estimates that the expansion, to be completed in late 2012, will cost $55 million (see NGI, July 20, 2009). When completed, the MAC expansion will provide Virginia Power Services Energy Corp. Inc. and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. with incremental firm transportation capacity from a Transco interconnection with East Tennessee Natural Gas pipeline in Rockingham County, NC, to delivery points as far north as Maryland. Other supply points in the path of the project include interconnects with Columbia Gas Transmission, Dominion Transmission and Dominion Cove Point.

Amid industry lobbying of Congress for federal legislation to further jump start an already resurgent natural gas transportation sector, Vancouver, BC-based Westport Innovations Inc., a natural gas engine technology provider, announced last month it has agreed to work with General Motors (GM) to advance engine technology for light-duty vehicles.