Fire

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) on Monday said it would plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 84 victims of the Camp Fire in November 2018. It also agreed to plead guilty to one count of unlawfully starting the wildfire.

California regulators on Tuesday proposed a $1.675 billion settlement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to address the combination utility’s culpability in igniting wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

Edison International’s Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) utility acknowledged its infrastructure may have caused the disruptive, fast-moving Saddleridge fire that skirted residential areas and a major gas storage facility in northern Los Angeles County last week, according to a report the company filed with state regulators.

Emergency crews on Wednesday afternoon were working to extinguish a fire that erupted at the ExxonMobil Baytown Olefins Plant on the Houston Ship Channel, which houses one of the largest ethylene plants in the world.

Ventura County, CA, officials said Wednesday a lengthy investigation has determined windy conditions caused two Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) transmission power lines to collide and start the Thomas Fire in 2017, which burned for 40 days, killed two people and destroyed more than 1,000 structures.

Four people were injured late Thursday when storage tanks caught fire at MarkWest Energy Partners LP’s Houston Processing and Fractionation facility in southwest Pennsylvania, according to the company.

California regulators late Thursday doubled down on the wildfires impacting each end of the state and the potential role by the two major utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE).

Oneok Inc.’s Stateline natural gas processing plant in Williams County, ND, has resumed full operations following a fire on July 8 that was confined to a single utility building. Fire erupted in the building tied to a 26,000 b/d de-ethanizer plant adjacent to the 200 MMcf/d processing plant. There were no reported injuries; the fire is under investigation. Stateline has been serving Bakken Shale operators since 2013.

Laredo Petroleum Inc. was expecting by Tuesday to restore most of the crude oil production shut in over the weekend following a fire at a West Texas tank battery in the Permian Basin.