Impose

The Safety and Enforcement Division of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on Monday recommended that regulators impose a total $2.25 billion penalty against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) for three penalty cases arising from the Sept. 9, 2010, pipeline rupture in San Bruno, CA.

In a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Bart Chilton Wednesday proposed that the agency be allowed to impose a targeted fee on transactions in the derivatives markets.

In a case with a significant potential impact in several states, an Ohio appeals court on Tuesday ruled that a municipality in Summit County exceeded its authority when it ordered a Utica Shale driller to stop operations, dealing a blow to local ordinances, or “home rule” laws.

Maryland lawmakers voted Thursday to approve a bill that enables utility companies to impose a surcharge on customers of up to $2/month to pay for repair and replacement of aging pipe and distribution lines.

A bill that would enable Maryland’s natural gas utilities to impose a monthly surcharge on customers of up to $2.00/month to pay for maintaining and replacing aging distribution lines appears likely to be approved by the legislature as soon as this week.

Republican leaders in the Ohio General Assembly indicated that they will give some consideration to Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to impose new severance taxes on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and natural gas liquids (NGL) in 2013, after declining to do so in 2012.

The administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett says new natural gas pipelines should be allowed to share rights-of-way (ROW) with roadways, one of 16 policy recommendations made to fulfill a requirement of the state’s new omnibus Marcellus Shale law, Act 13.

A legislator in the Maryland House of Delegates announced Wednesday that she plans to introduce a bill next year that would impose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the state’s portion of the Marcellus Shale until a comprehensive scientific study is completed.

A recent analysis of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) data from fracfocus.org and oil and gas well records from eight states, which concluded that nearly half of the wells fracked during the last nine months of 2011 were not disclosed on the website, doesn’t tell the whole story, according to industry sources. The industry supports the disclosure website and continues to flood it with well data, they said.