Commissioner

The recently formed Eagle Ford Task Force, which was created by Texas Railroad Commissioner David Porter (see Shale Daily, July 29), outlined its agenda for the rest of the year at a meeting last week. The 24 task force members plan to focus on water usage and hydraulic fracturing; the impact of oil and gas production on community infrastructure; the need for public education about oil and gas production; and the promotion of economic development through the industry. At the meeting members discussed workforce issues affecting the region. Industry representatives estimated that approximately 120 jobs are connected to each drilling rig and currently there are about 200 rigs operating in the Eagle Ford. However, employers are often battling failed drug tests and background tests or the lack of commercial drivers licenses when trying to fill jobs in the burgeoning oil and natural gas play, they said.

Mark P. Wetjen, President Obama’s nominee to succeed the departing Commissioner Michael Dunn at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), assured a Senate panel Thursday that he will be able to make informed and reasoned rulemaking decisions to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, although he will be late to the game.

Mark P. Wetjen, President Obama’s nominee to succeed the departing Commissioner Michael Dunn at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), assured a Senate panel Thursday that he will be able to make informed and reasoned rulemaking decisions to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, although he will be late to the game.

Hoping to lead the nation in greater exploitation of domestic energy resources, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell and state Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan Thursday touted a plan to tap the state’s oil reserves and refill the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), with the hope of shipping 1 million b/d of oil on TAPS within a decade.

Aging pipeline infrastructure will need to be replaced and/or upgraded to support the nation’s transition to heavier reliance on natural gas, FERC Commissioner John Norris said Tuesday.

A hybrid natural gas and solar power generation project has been recommended for approval by the California Energy Commission. The proposed decision by a two-commissioner review committee found no significant environmental impacts from the City of Palmdale’s proposal to transform a 377-acre industrial site in the northern end of Los Angeles County for a 570 MW gas-fired combined cycle plant with adjacent solar thermal collectors providing 10% of the facility’s peak power output. Assuming the full CEC approves the three-year-old proposal, the city then needs to find a developer and a long-term contract for the plant’s output before construction can start. It is slated to begin commercial operations in summer 2013.

Pennsylvania’s shale plays “are an incredible opportunity” for the job-starved state, according to incoming Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, who declared that he and Gov. Tom Corbett “will send a message that Pennsylvania is open for business.”

Citing FERC’s tradition of bipartisanship, Commissioner Marc Spitzer told an energy conference in San Francisco last Monday that the same cooperative approach is needed in Congress and elsewhere in Washington, DC, to address the nation’s energy issues, such as climate change, which he thinks cannot be ignored. Meanwhile for the gas industry shale gas — not politics — is the real game changer, he said.

Shale gas is a major revolution with broad implications for the nation’s energy picture, according to FERC Commissioner Marc Spitzer and several other speakers Monday at a Law Seminars International’s “Energy in California” conference in San Francisco.