Disclosure

Amid cries for Stronger safeguards regarding the public disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) on Monday put off for a week or more finalizing the state’s proposed new rules on disclosing fracking chemicals used in oil and gas shale fracking operations. COGCC heard more than 11 hours of testimony in Denver.

Texas legislation that would require disclosure of the contents of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid, which was passed recently by the House, might stall in the Senate as the chair of that body’s Natural Resources Committee said he was unaware of the bill until recently and is concerned about “unintended consequences.”

With both tight gas sands and oil shale development emerging in the state, a California legislator has introduced a bill (AB 591) seeking to require public disclosure of any chemicals used in oil/gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

A new website that provides a list of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing is already becoming popular after its launch on Monday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Cadeville Gas Storage LLC’s application to build a planned gas storage facility in Ouachita Parish, LA, approximately 10 miles southwest of Monroe. Storage services are scheduled to begin in 2012. The three- to four-turn facility is being designed to provide a peak deliverability of 420 MMcf/d and a peak injection of 420 MMcf/d. Cadeville plans to convert a depleted gas reservoir to develop a total of 16.5 Bcf of working capacity. The facility would have the ability to interconnect to Tennessee Gas Pipeline Line 100, Gulf South’s Middle 30, Gulf South’s 42-inch East Texas to Mississippi Expansion, Texas Gas Transmission, CenterPoint Energy Line CP and Energy Transfer Partners’ 42″ Tiger Pipeline. Open seasons held in 2009 (see NGI, April 6, 2009) and earlier this summer (see NGI, May 31) received total bids for more than twice the amount of working gas capacity proposed in its application, according to Cadeville.

Range Resources Corp. submitted its first voluntary hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracing) disclosure forms to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and has posted the information on its website.

Two months after the disclosure of drug usage, inappropriate sexual activity and contract misdealing by former employees of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), a former agency official was sentenced Friday for a felony violation of the criminal conflict of interest law, federal prosecutors said.

Within days of the disclosure of drug usage, inappropriate sexual activity and contract misconduct at the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), a former deputy associate Monday pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the restrictions on post-government employment that involved the illegal awarding of a contract to a company of a retired agency colleague (see Daily GPI, Sept. 11).

Lawyers for former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who has been charged in a wide-ranging conspiracy case stemming from Enron’s collapse in Dec. 2001, have asked a Houston federal judge to disclose the names of 114 people alleged to be co-conspirators.