Announcement

TransCanada Corp. moved Thursday to calm a hornets’ nest of protest among its natural gas customers in Ontario, Quebec and the northeastern United States by making a formal promise to maintain service continuity.

President Obama’s announcement Tuesday of a sweeping climate change initiative, which some are calling a “war on coal,” will add to the list of departing coal-fired power plants and could result in demand for an incremental 4-8 Bcf/d of natural gas by 2020, one analyst estimated (see Daily GPI, June 26).

What has seemed inevitable for most of this year happened Friday with the announcement by Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) that it plans to retire its trouble-riddled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs) along the Southern California coast. Utility and state energy officials increasingly have been planning for the loss of the region’s major baseload power source for some time (see NGI, June 3).

What has seemed inevitable for most of this year happened Friday with the announcement by Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) that it plans to retire its trouble-riddled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs) along the Southern California coast. Utility and state energy officials increasingly have been planning for the loss of the region’s major baseload power source for some time (see Daily GPI, May 29).

BHP Billiton Ltd.’s recent announcement of a $2.8B charge for the diminished value of its dry gas Fayetteville Shale assets (see Shale Daily, Aug. 7) wasn’t the only bad shale-related news to come from the Australian company. Its Petrohawk Energy Corp. unit has been turning in sour numbers as well.

Abundant regional supplies of natural gas helped Louisiana to score another economic development win with the announcement that Methanex Corp. will construct a $550 million methanol plant in the state.

On the heels of an announcement by its largest Detroit-based competitor, Chrysler Group LLC said this week it plans to become North America’s only auto manufacturer to offer a factory-built compressed natural gas (CNG) pickup truck. General Motors announced a similar CNG pickup rollout on Monday, albeit at a slower pace (see Daily GPI, March 6).

If there were any more proof needed that there’s too much gas in the Marcellus Shale region and it needs to get out, the industry got it last week with the announcement of two pipeline projects — estimated to cost about $1 billion each — that would carry Marcellus supplies to greener markets.

Gastar Exploration Ltd. has signed a lease with Bayer AG to drill Marcellus Shale gas wells on 1,400 gross acres in New Martinsville, a site that is being touted as a possible location for an ethane cracker in West Virginia.