Members

Dominion Exploration and Production said about 200 members of its offshore business unit will begin returning to New Orleans in March. The company’s announcement follows Shell Exploration & Production Co.’s news last week that it will move 1,000 employees back to the Big Easy beginning in January (see Daily GPI, Dec. 16).

By now it’s well clear to members of the natural gas industry that liquefied natural gas (LNG) is writing the next chapter in the industry’s evolution. The gas business has come a long way from the days of pipeline take-or-pay contracts and the moratorium on gas-fired power generation. It remains to be seen, though, how far “back to the future” LNG might take the industry.

One of the five elected members of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) last Tuesday proposed to her fellow state regulators that ACC staff be directed to investigate the pension plan funding levels of all major utilities in the state after her assessment of the state’s three major private-sector energy utilities revealed they are all currently under-funded collectively by more than $500 million.

The chief members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee agreed late Tuesday, following a day of intense pressure from Florida senators, to oppose any effort to weaken the moratorium on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off the coast of Florida or to open up Lease 181 in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The energy lawyer and perceived “moderate” among the California Public Utilities Commission’s five members, Dian Grueneich, was confirmed by the state Senate last Friday, leaving only the more recently nominated John Bohn needing to gain the lawmakers’ approval. Grueneich is a Democrat, Bohn is a Republican, and the California legislature is heavily Democrat-controlled in both houses.

Siting authority over liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals will likely be the second most contentious issue facing the members of House Energy and Commerce Committee during mark-up of omnibus energy legislation this week, preceded only by the heated dispute over waivers for producers of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), said an official with a major natural gas pipeline group.

One of the two new members of the California Public Utilities Commission was sworn in last Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dian Grueneich’s official placement on the five-member regulatory panel was announced Thursday by the CPUC’s San Francisco office. A lawyer who has worked on various energy and environmental issues before the CPUC in the past, Grueneich still has to be confirmed by the California Senate, but under state law, she can serve for up to a year without being confirmed. A second Schwarzenegger appointee, Steve Poizner, was not mentioned in the CPUC announcement so it is assumed the governor is still waiting to swear him in to his new position — a paid, full-time appointment, as is Grueneich’s. A long-time observer of the CPUC and a speaker at a Seattle energy conference Thursday, Arthur O’Donnell, said as part of as summary of the state’s current energy issues that Grueneich likely will have to recuse herself from a number of CPUC votes during her first year because of the work she has done in recent years representing various consumer, energy efficiency and environmental interests before the CPUC.

A coalition of 18 congressional members are siding with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in its challenge to FERC’s claim of “exclusive jurisdiction” over Sound Energy Solution’s planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal for the Port of Long Beach, CA.

A coalition of 18 congressional members are siding with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in its challenge to FERC’s claim of “exclusive jurisdiction” over Sound Energy Solution’s planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal for the Port of Long Beach, CA.