Found

Although emphasizing its utility assets more in recent years, Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. has found new life in its oil/gas exploration and production (E&P) unit with the advent of the Mancos shale play in the Piceance and San Juan basins, CEO Dave Emery recently told an energy financial audience in Orlando, FL.

Although softening continued at New England locations, most of the market found enough impending increases in heating load to spur higher prices Tuesday. The overall cash bullishness was able to overcome a prior-day drop of 8.7 cents by December futures and expectations that a net build in storage had extended into at least the first week of November.

More than 35,000 manufacturing jobs could be created in Louisiana thanks to affordable supplies of natural gas from shale plays, American Chemistry Council (ACC) CEO Cal Dooley said.

A California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) judge recommended Friday that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) be allowed to increase maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) at its Topock receipt transmission pipeline along the Arizona-California border. The CPUC will take up the recommendation when it meets Oct. 6.

A relatively late entrant in the growing national debate about shale formations and how much long-term domestic reserves they bring to the United States, the Monterey Shale in California is an extensive old oil play that some analysts are predicting will experience a rebirth in today’s shale-dominated domestic energy world.

An estimate of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) contained in the Marcellus Shale issued this week by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will be included in the next Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), according to EIA.

Federal and state investigators found and disarmed a potential explosive device that was left along a natural gas transmission line near Okemah, OK, about 70 miles east of Oklahoma City.

Southern said further investigation found “significant internal damage” at Hall Gate Compressor Station, and while a repair plan is being developed, the return to service date of the facility is unknown. The pipeline also said personnel were reviewing required maintenance plans at other stations in the area in an effort to minimize any further capacity impacts. For now no FT impact was anticipated and no service reductions as a result of the Hall Gate outage due to requirements exceeding capacity of an upstream compressor station have occurred. However, reductions of up to 50,000 Dth/d of available interruptible service could occur if system conditions change, Southern said.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. has found another way to fund development for some of its abundant unconventional reserves, this time by launching an initial public offering (IPO) of a royalty trust for properties in the Anadarko Basin.