Federal

A market manipulation case brought against Total Gas & Power North America Inc. (TGPNA) by FERC’s enforcement staff “suffers from multiple infirmities” and doesn’t include documentary evidence of intent to manipulate any market, according to the company.

A final environmental impact statement (FEIS) was released for public comment last Thursday that would allow oil/natural gas drilling on up to nearly 120,000 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)-managed lands in two counties in northern Utah in the Uintah Basin. BLM noted that mitigation will be a critical part of any final decision on the sizable project.

Attorneys for the federal government have appealed last week’s ruling by a federal judge in Wyoming that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) does not have the authority to enforce a rule governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public and tribal lands.

In a win for the oil and gas industry and its supporters, a federal judge in Wyoming ruled Tuesday that the Department of Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM) does not have the authority to enforce a rule governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public and tribal lands.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved amendments to authorization it previously granted Impulsora Pipeline LLC (previously Columbia Pipeline LLC) for border crossing natural gas pipeline facilities between the United States and Mexico for a project that would carry gas from the Eagle Ford Shale to markets in Mexico [CP16-70]. Impulsora no longer plans to build one of the previously-authorized parallel pipelines in Texas at the international border between the United States and Mexico, FERC said. The border crossing would be in Webb County, TX, and near Colombia in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. The project would be constructed by Impulsora, a unit of San Antonio-based Howard Energy Partners LLC, which provides midstream services mainly in the Eagle Ford. Last year, FERC approved plans for parallel 36-inch and 12-inch diameter pipelines (see Shale Daily,May 15, 2015). The company has determined that it will only need the 36-inch diameter pipeline, FERC said.

Oregon’s two U.S. senators on Thursday asked the head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) why a federal investigative team was not dispatched last weekend to the scene of an oil tanker train derailment in their state near the Columbia River Gorge.

Energy Transfer Partners’ (ETP) Dakota Access Pipeline LLC unit has kept passage over federal lands to a minimum for its four-state, 1,172-mile project to ship Bakken crude oil to markets along the East and Gulf coasts, the ETP executive in charge of building the $3.8 billion line said Tuesday in a presentation at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, ND.

Total Gas & Power North America Inc. (TGPNA) has taken its defense against a recent FERC enforcement staff allegation of three years of natural gas trading manipulation in the Southwest to a federal district court in Texas. The Total SA unit contends the federal courts are the only place where alleged violations of the federal Natural Gas Act (NGA) can be sorted out.

Total Gas & Power North America Inc. (TGPNA) has taken its defense against a recent FERC enforcement staff allegation of three years of natural gas trading manipulation in the Southwest to a federal district court in Texas. The Total SA unit contends the federal courts are the only place where alleged violations of the federal Natural Gas Act (NGA) can be sorted out.