Event

An El Nino event in the Pacific and relatively cool waters in the Atlantic will combine to suppress the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin this year, according to forecasters at Weather Services International (WSI).

In the context of opening a United Nations (UN) environmental event in his city Wednesday, Portland, OR, Mayor Charlie Hales called for several Oregon state investment funds to purge themselves of holdings in fossil fuel companies. The state’s largest city already has taken that step, Hales said.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s share price had fallen more than 4% in afternoon trading Tuesday following news a day earlier to revamp corporate governance and rein in spending and compensation. Among other things, CEO Aubrey McClendon won’t receive a bonus for 2012 and some of his perquisites have been cut.

An emerging El Nino event — the warming of water temperatures in the central and equatorial Pacific Ocean — will bring warmer-than-normal temperatures to the eastern United States in September and October and could keep much of the West cooler than normal, according to forecasters at Andover, MA-based Weather Services International (WSI).

The climax of a three-day “Stop the Frack Attack” anti-hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday had been advertised by its organizers as an event that would bring “thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the globe” to protest the practice.

The number of “felt” manmade earthquakes induced by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in oil and natural gas operations is negligible, the chair of a major report on seismicity activity told a Senate panel Tuesday. However the disposal of the water associated with fracking of shale gas wells is linked to increased quake activity, an official with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

Kinder Morgan Inc.’s (KMI) analyst day Wednesday drew the largest crowd CEO Rich Kinder said he’s ever seen at the event. Perhaps it was because of “some little acquisition we’ve been working on” (El Paso Corp.), he suggested. Even with lawyers keeping executives mostly mum on that item, shale gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) made for plenty to talk about.

At the start of Wednesday’s gas day Destin will end a force majeure event and resume normal operations from its Main Pass 260 platform through the onshore Pascagoula Gas Plant in Mississippi (see Daily GPI, Oct. 18). The alternate delivery point to Viosca Knoll Gathering System will no longer be available for transportation services until further notice, Destin said.

Operations at two Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale near Morgantown, WV, have been delayed while the company awaits the arrival of a service rig.