Late

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) late last Friday filed its second annual report to state regulators summarizing its progress on current and future work aimed at improving its natural gas system’s safety as mandated by a state law (SB 705) passed in 2011 in response to the 2010 San Bruno transmission pipeline failure. Under its pipeline safety enhancement plan, PG&E told the California Public Utilities Commission that it has strength-tested 456 miles of its 6,750-mile gas transmission pipeline system. The utility said its has installed 76 automated shutoff valves on critical parts of the system while validating the safe operating pressure for the entire system. In addition, the utility said it is pursuing an internationally recognized gas safety certification for its system called “Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 55”; it also has established an employee-led company wide, grassroots safety committee to promote safe work habits, best practices and open communications; and it has a new Corrective Action Program to collect and act on gas system issues and ideas though a central internal company processing center. In addition, PG&E said its ongoing gas safety plan overall has been reviewed by several outside parties and includes input from employees at all levels of the PG&E gas operations organization.

Talisman Energy Inc. is shopping its Eagle Ford Shale acreage with hopes of raising up to US$2 billion, according to a Reuters report that cited unnamed sources.

A U.S. natural gas storage surplus of 463 Bcf on Feb. 15 had tumbled to a 32 Bcf deficit by May 24, a 495 Bcf decline that “ranks among the strongest we have seen, and oddly, the timing was in the late winter and early spring,” analysts at Stephen Smith Energy Associates said in their most recent Monthly Energy Outlook.

An MDU Resources Group Inc. subsidiary on Thursday announced a natural gas pipeline project that would stretch across the Bakken Shale from western North Dakota to western Minnesota, where it would connect with Viking Gas Transmission Co.’s gas system.

After adding its $5.59 billion acquisition of Las Vegas-based NV Energy Inc. announced late Wednesday, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., will be a $66 billion combination natural gas and electric utility company serving more than 8 million customers globally, along with a growing renewable energy portfolio, international grid and generation businesses and two major interstate natural gas pipelines.

Utility developers working on combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) projects in the Marcellus and Utica shales are looking for a “power price appreciation” that will come from the excess natural gas, according analysts with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Inc. (TPH).

The stock market price of natural gas-weighted companies spiked from late Friday through Tuesday as prospects for a more profitable product heightened when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) broke the log-jam and announced it was conferring a worldwide liquefied natural gas (LNG) export license on a second project (see Daily GPI, May 20).

A coalition of nine environmental groups in West Virginia have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to require that operators add tracers to fluids used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at Marcellus Shale oil and gas wells drilled near the Monongahela National Forest.

Houston’s TC PipeLines LP late Wednesday increased its natural gas partnership by one-third in a $1.05 billion agreement with parent TransCanada Corp. that would give it control over both Gas Transmission Northwest LLC (GTN) and Bison Pipeline LLC.