Committee

A California legislative committee has started examining the impact of last year’s devastating wildfires on the state’s investor-owned utilities (IOU) and the potential financial consequences.

Appalachian pure-play Antero Resources Corp. said Monday that it has taken another step to address its stock discount by forming a special board committee to evaluate ways that would better reflect the company’s overall worth and enhance value for shareholders.

All six witnesses at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Thursday said they oppose for both process and substance reasons the Department of Energy’s (DOE) recent proposal to provide reliability and resiliency compensation to coal and nuclear baseload generators. Several subcommittee members were sharply critical of the proposal as well.

The nominations of Kevin McIntyre and Richard Glick to FERC received the support of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday and were sent to the full Senate for consideration.

Pennsylvania state Sen. John Yudichak (D-Luzerne County) plans to introduce a resolution that would require a legislative committee to launch a performance evaluation of permitting programs overseen by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), in a move to allay the regulated community’s concerns about agency delays, such as those voiced by the natural gas industry.

The Republican-led Pennsylvania House energy committee has voted 15-11 along party lines for an amendment to change the name of the state’s “impact fee” to “severance tax.” The committee hasn’t voted to move the amendment to the House floor. In a procedural move, the amendment would block a resolution filed by Democrats to bring a severance tax bill to the floor for a vote. It also comes after the state Senate passed a revenue package to fund the state budget that calls for establishing a severance tax on unconventional natural gas production. The impact fee was established in 2012 and is charged annually on nearly all unconventional wells in the state during their first 15 years of operation. Producers have paid more than $1.2 billion in impact fees for distribution to local communities and state agencies since it was enacted. House energy committee Chairman John Maher told local news media that changing the impact fee’s name would help to demonstrate that producers have a significant tax burden in the state.

A subsidiary of Plains All American Pipeline LPis conducting an open season through July 17 for committed crude oil pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin’s Delaware sub-basin to the Cushing hub in Oklahoma. The pipeline would originate at Conan Station in Loving County, TX. Depending on the results of the open season, committed volumes would move on a combination of new and existing pipelines. Subject to shipper commitments and regulatory approvals, the pipeline could be operational in mid-2019. For information contact Kevin Snodgrass.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is expected to vote Tuesday on the Trump administration’s nominations of Neil Chatterjeeand Robert Powelson to be members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Dan Brouillette to be deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, and David Bernhardt to be deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior. Trump sent their names to the committee after a “torturously slow” nominationprocess, according to Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), but theirhearingsproduced little controversy or criticism from Senators. If approved by the committee, the nominations will be sent to the full Senate for confirmation.

There was little controversy and plenty of goodwill for a trio of Trump administration nominees to FERC and the Department of Energy (DOE) Thursday when they appeared at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.