Ending

The value of fugitive natural gas and condensate air emissions in the Barnett Shale of North Texas is about $52 million a year, according to research paid for by a clean air group, which asserts that “simple air pollution control devices” would capture this lost revenue if they were installed in the nine-county nonattainment area around Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW).

Federal officials said the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will begin a two-year study of the Bakken Formation in October to obtain a better estimate of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas contained in Montana and North Dakota portions of the shale play.

Despite ending April at 1.8 Tcf — about an 11% decline compared with April 2010 — working gas inventories will build strongly this summer and should approach record-high levels in the second half of the year, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for May.

A day after ending a low-inventory OFO, Pacific Gas and Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory on its California Gas Transmission system for Friday, setting penalties of $1/Dth for exceeding a 5% tolerance on positive daily imbalances.

Shale gas plays gained 14 active rigs to 964 rigs in the week ended April 29 over the previous week’s 950 rigs for a 1% increase, but the total was a 2% decrease from the 981 rigs active a month ago for the week ending April 1, according to NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count.

Southern California Gas had a high-linepack OFO in effect for Friday and Saturday only before ending it Sunday.

Northern Natural Gas did not extend a System Overrun Limitation in market-area Zone EF beyond Wednesday.

After ending Tuesday a five-day series of System Overrun Limitations (SOL) in all market-area zones, Northern Natural Gas will implement a new SOL Wednesday in only Zone EF.

Northern Natural Gas is ending Tuesday a System Overrun Limitation in all market-area zones that had been in effect since last Thursday.