Formations

Plains All American Pipeline LP is constructing a 95-mile extension of its Oklahoma crude oil pipeline to service increasing production from the Granite Wash, Hogshooter and Cleveland Sands producing areas in western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. The new Western Oklahoma pipeline will provide up to 75,000 b/d of takeaway capacity from Reydon, OK, in Roger Mills County to PAA’s Orion station in Major County, OK. At the Orion station, crude oil will flow on PAA’s existing pipeline system to the PAA terminal in Cushing, OK. The new Western Oklahoma pipeline is supported by long-term producer commitments and is expected to be in service by the end of the first quarter of 2014, the company said.

Opponents of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Michigan plan to begin collecting signatures for a petition that could ask voters in 2014 whether to allow the drilling stimulation practice to be used in the state.

Atlas Pipeline Partners LP stepped deeper into the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas on Tuesday with a $1 billion cash agreement to buy privately held Teak Midstream LLC, a natural gas gathering and processing operator.

Two workers were killed and three others hospitalized Friday morning in an oil well blowout in the Bone Spring tight sands formation in West Texas, near Barstow.

In the headline of a story published Jan. 2, “DOE Identifies 2.4B Metric Tons of CO2 Storage Capacity” (see Daily GPI, Jan. 2), the amount of possible carbon dioxide (CO2) storage capacity in U.S. saline formations, oil and gas reservoirs and unmineable coal seams was incorrectly stated. The Department of Energy report actually identified 2.4 trillion metric tons of CO2 storage capacity. NGI regrets the error.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said Tuesday four core U.S. onshore operating plays — the Wattenberg Field in Colorado, the Greater Natural Buttes in Utah, and the Marcellus and Eagle Ford shales — eclipsed production records in November, with each one exceeding a gross processed production milestone of 100,000 boe/d.

A public-sector water conservancy is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court for the right to divert and store water for prospective clients, including shale oil and gas operators. A state water court earlier denied the proposal by Yellow Jacket Water Conservancy District.

Production in North Dakota’s Bakken/Three Forks shale playscontinued to climb month over month in August, the most recent month for accumulating statistics, the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) reported. With more wells producing in August compared to the previous month (7,701 vs. 7,481), both crude oil and natural gas production exceeded July totals. Crude oil production reached 21.7 million bbl in August, compared with 20.9 million bbl in July. A number of wells remained idle as there were 8,495 wells capable of production in August, DMR said. As in recent months, the vast bulk of the production came from four counties: Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams.

If there is a “bet-the-farm” opportunity in natural gas infrastructure, it lies in the potential production growth in the Utica and Marcellus shale formations, according to Mark McGettrick, CFO of Dominion Resources in Virginia.