Columbia

The Maryland Board of Public Works, a three-member panel that includes Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, defied state regulators and unanimously rejected awarding an easement for Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s Eastern Panhandle Expansion Project.

Nearly five years into a push to expand in the Pacific Northwest, advocates continue wading through permitting challenges to build natural gas-fed methanol production plants along the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon.

Columbia Gas Transmission (CGT) is seeking authorization from FERC to place into service portions of its Mountaineer XPress project, which would increase natural gas pipeline capacity out of the Appalachian Basin by expanding the TransCanada Corp. affiliate’s system.

A series of natural gas explosions and fires that rocked three Massachusetts communities in September killing one man and damaging 131 structures may have been caused by gaps in construction work orders for the old system that were prepared by NiSource Inc. subsidiary Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The same day it OK’d the startup of Atlantic Sunrise, FERC authorized service on another Appalachian takeaway expansion aimed at serving the East Coast, Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s WB XPress Project.

A construction restoration project is underway in the greater Lawrence area of Massachusetts as Columbia Gas of Massachusetts aims to restart natural gas service to customers by mid-November.

Patricia M. French has been appointed as a FERC administrative law judge (ALJ), according to Chairman Kevin McIntyre. French has been an ALJ with the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review since October 2016, and was an energy regulatory salaried shareholder in Bernstein Shur Sawyer & Nelson LLC’s energy and environmental practice group before that. French also served as chief compliance officer and division counsel for Columbia Pipeline Group and is a past vice president, assistant general counsel and chief compliance officer for Kern River Gas Transmission Co. She is a graduate of the Boston University School of Law and a member of the bars of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First and District of Columbia Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for New Hampshire, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine.

Columbia Gas of Massachusetts is aiming to have natural gas service restored to all residential and commercial customers by Nov. 19 and has begun the “massive replacement program” of the utility’s distribution system following a series of explosions on Sept. 13 in Merrimack Valley near Boston.

Shell Canada Ltd. courted favor in environmentally sensitive British Columbia (BC) on Thursday by surrendering about 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) of offshore drilling rights to the federal government.