Distributed

California’s grid operator on Tuesday said it now has FERC approval for a first-in-the-nation tariff change to encourage more distributed generation on the grid. It is another move toward redesigning power grids that has implications for both natural gas and electricity operations.

An update conducted last year of a Texas water use study found that oil and gas producers are using more water for hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but they’re also recycling more, making it important to distinguish between water “use” and “consumption.”

Following the release earlier this year of a report on alternative technologies for using flared natural gas, the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) in North Dakota is set to launch a bi-fuel (natural gas/diesel) drilling rig power source in a demonstration project starting early next year, the center’s associate director told NGI’s Shale Daily Thursday.

Work on Shell Pipeline’s Eagle Ford Shale- and Permian Basin-focused Houma, LA, to Houston (Ho-Ho) oil pipeline system reversal is going according to plan, based on shipper requests and new crude production and infrastructure coming online, the company said. Through a Declaratory Order, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently approved the contract rates and capacity allocation for the Ho-Ho Reversal project. The initial phase will move crude oil from connecting pipelines and terminals in East Houston to Nederland, TX, and Port Arthur, TX, thereby supplying the refining complex across the region with crude from the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin, as well as crude supplies from the Cushing, OK, area. Phase I of the project is designed to complement new pipeline infrastructure that is currently being built to the Houston area. The Royal Dutch Shell plc subsidiary last August said it was considering reversing flows on the 22-inch diameter Ho-Ho system to enable more than 300,000 b/d of crude to be distributed across the Gulf Coast region (see Shale Daily, Aug. 9, 2011).

Fuel cells that use natural gas to chemically produce electricity with small onsite distributed generation units are receiving increased attention because of low natural gas prices, according to Danbury, CT-based FuelCell Energy Inc. (FCEL), a leading manufacturer of gas-based units that are up to 2.8 MW in size.

Last year saw a transformation at Houston-based Carrizo Oil & Gas Inc. as the company shifted from deriving its revenue mostly from natural gas to an equal reliance upon revenue from oil production, CEO Chip Johnson told financial analysts Tuesday. “We expect this trend to continue for the entire year of 2012 as we become increasingly weighted toward oil production,” he said.

A California Superior Court in San Diego last Friday ordered more than $100 million distributed of the $1.8 billion El Paso Energy Co. settlement for the non-core customer claimants from the first half of an anti-trust conspiracy lawsuit filed against El Paso and Sempra Energy’s two major natural gas utilities, according to one of the local law firms that filed the original lawsuit, Baker, Burton and Lundy, Hermosa Beach, CA.

A Texas bankruptcy judge has ordered nearly 40 former Enron Corp. energy traders to return $20 million in bonuses, money distributed just days before the company declared bankruptcy in December 2001. Barring appeals, the monies will be disbursed to about 4,500 other ex-employees who were fired.

More than $1.24 billion was distributed to 36 states during fiscal year 2004 as part of their share of federal revenues collected by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS).