Dozen

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, joined by leaders in the natural gas and chemical industries, announced Tuesday the formation of the Marcellus to Manufacturing Task Force, intended to harness the business opportunities surrounding the development of the Marcellus Shale.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) on Thursday elected a new leadership team to helm the executive committee and announced the addition of almost three dozen associate member companies.

With a dozen tropical storms already named this year, WSI Corp. forecasters say they expect a total of 18 named storms, including 10 hurricanes, six of them intense (Category 3 or stronger), to form before the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

An explosion Feb. 7 at a natural gas-fired power plant under construction in Middletown, CT, which killed five workers and injured more than a dozen, has drawn attention to gas pipeline practices and prompted one lawmaker to lash out at a proposed pipeline that would run through New Jersey.

More than a dozen families living in a northeastern Pennsylvania town in the heart of the Marcellus Shale on Thursday sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and a service operator, claiming that their water wells became contaminated when the producer used hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracing) to stimulate production from area natural gas wells. The plaintiffs claim the hydrofracing “fluid and/or drilling mud includes hazardous chemicals that are carcinogenic and toxic.”

Lawmen in East Texas last week arrested more than a dozen people accused of stealing or conspiring to steal condensate from gas drilling operations in the area in a large-scale conspiracy. More arrests are expected as the investigation continues, officials said.

A retired official of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) was sentenced last Monday to probation and a $2,000 fine for felony violation of rules governing employees after they leave the federal government.

Among more than a half-dozen new pieces of legislation that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law at the end of last month, two laws aimed at curbing the spike in metal thefts from utilities, municipalities and farm equipment suppliers (AB 844 and SB 691) were prioritized as the most important new laws for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), according to one of the utility’s managers in Sacramento.

Having locked up reserves and pre-pay natural gas deals in the past two years, the infrastructure financing arm for a dozen Southern California municipal utilities is assessing its member utilities to determine if their tanks are full, or they still want to buy some peace of mind in terms of future fuel supplies for generating electricity in the southern half of the state. The assessment will come the first half of next year.