Chairman

The United States now has an “incredible” opportunity to be energy self-sufficient, John Pinkerton, executive chairman of Range Resources Corp., told an industry audience last week, urging the development of a diverse energy policy using all of the nation’s resources.

Coming only weeks after he said FERC was powerless to respond to cyber threats to energy infrastructure, Chairman Jon Wellinghoff last Thursday announced the creation of an office to help the Commission focus on cyber and physical security risks to energy facilities under its jurisdiction, such as interstate natural gas pipelines, gas storage facilities and the transmission of electricity in interstate commerce.

The nation’s energy infrastructure remains vulnerable to ongoing cyber attacks and the government is powerless to do anything about it, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said in Washington, DC, Wednesday.

The nation’s energy infrastructure remains vulnerable to ongoing cyber attacks and the government is powerless to do anything about it, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said in Washington, DC, Wednesday.

High Prairie Pipeline LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Durango, CO-based Saddle Butte Pipeline LLC, expects FERC to act soon on its complaint that Enbridge Energy Ltd. has discriminated against it by denying it an interconnection to deliver oil from the Bakken Shale formation to the market hub at Clearbrook MN, a spokesman said Tuesday (see Shale Daily, June 4).

Driven primarily by continuing record oil production from the Bakken Shale formation, North Dakota’s economy is booming and is on target to produce more than $3.5 billion in tax revenues by the end of the state’s current two-year (2011-2013) fiscal year budget period, according to the state tax commissioner.

Wrapping up the $38 billion acquisition that has been called a “once in a lifetime transaction,” Kinder Morgan on Thursday completed its acquisition of El Paso Corp., creating the largest midstream and the fourth largest energy company in North America, owning an interest in or operating approximately 75,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals with an enterprise value of more than $90 billion.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, last week questioned whether the Interior Department Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) investigation of a report that led to the six-month moratorium on Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling was conducted independently.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has raised questions about whether the Interior Department Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) investigation of the report that lead to the six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was conducted independently of the department.