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A California Superior Court judge in Alameda County recently upheld the state’s ongoing program for underground injection control (UIC) wells, which has come under criticism the past two years.

California’s second-largest underground natural gas storage field — Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) McDonald Island in Northern California — has been closed following the discovery of small leaks around some of the 87 gas storage wells at the 81 Bcf capacity facility.

California’s Department of Conservation (DOC) on Friday released preliminary draft permanent regulations covering natural gas storage facilities in the state, an outgrowth of the four-month storage well leak that was sealed in February and an emergency order from Gov. Jerry Brown resulting from the prolonged incident.

California oil/natural gas regulators are targeting two old, poorly abandoned oil wells in a residential neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles in an effort to shine a light on “orphan” wells, of which there are hundreds, if not thousands, throughout the state.

Targeting an end-of-summer reopening of the closed Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility, Southern California Gas Co. officials said Tuesday they have completed the first two integrity tests for temperature and noise on 86 of the 114 storage wells.

Targeting an end-of-summer reopening of the closed Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility, Southern California Gas Co. officials said Tuesday they have completed the first two integrity tests for temperature and noise on 86 of the 114 storage wells.

Some 229 leaks were found in California’s 12 underground natural gas storage fields in a recent survey, but all but a handful were minor and nearly all of them were repaired by the time the survey results were released recently. Non-utility run Lodi Storage in Northern California was the only one found to be leak free.

Further signs appeared Friday that California intends to pay closer attention to its myriad of natural gas underground storage facilities, as state regulators levied civil penalties for gas venting against an ongoing oil producer at Southern California Gas Co.’s (SoCalGas) now closed Aliso Canyon storage field, where a four-month-long well leak ended last month (see Daily GPI, Feb. 18).

Engineers from California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) on Thursday confirmed that the nearly four-month-old leaking natural gas storage well in Southern California has now been permanently sealed.