Becoming

The top gas executive for San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) told NGI Tuesday the combination utility is less than half way toward becoming a “top quartile” gas distribution and transmission pipeline operation but it still needs to fulfill a dozen recommendations from federal regulators following the September 2010 rupture and explosion of the transmission pipeline in San Bruno, CA, he said.

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is becoming safer in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, thanks at least in part to the state’s regulation of the practice, according to researchers at the University at Buffalo’s (UB) Shale Resources and Society Institute.

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is becoming safer in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, thanks at least in part to the state’s regulation of the practice, according to researchers at the University at Buffalo’s (UB) Shale Resources and Society Institute.

Following 30 years of declining oil output in the Lower 48 states, the United States now is well on its way to becoming energy independent — a structural supply shift that promises to reach well beyond oil and natural gas stocks, analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said in a note last week.

Following 30 years of declining oil output in the Lower 48 states, the United States now is well on its way to becoming energy independent — a structural supply shift that promises to reach well beyond oil and natural gas stocks, analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said in a note Monday.

With the Marcellus and Utica shale ethane situation under control for the moment, propane is becoming the next natural gas liquid (NGL) to trouble producers in Appalachia.

The prospects for exporting U.S. natural gas are intertwined with a whole set of variables that are becoming increasingly tough to predict, according to the lead gas and electricity prognosticator at the California Energy Commission (CEC).

The prospects for exporting U.S. natural gas are intertwined with a whole set of variables that are becoming increasingly tough to predict, according to the lead gas and electricity prognosticator at the California Energy Commission (CEC).

The fortunes of the natural gas and chemicals industries are becoming increasingly intertwined, and they will be even more so if Royal Dutch Shell plc constructs a world-class ethane cracker in the heart of the Marcellus Shale. Such a plant would handle Shell’s equity ethane production and that of third parties. And it would be a Rust Belt job-creation engine.