Model

No place in the entire world has better dry or wet gas potential than the Marcellus Shale, now “four years into a 50-year play,” but ensuring that there’s enough infrastructure for adequate takeaway will take some time, a top Williams executive said last week.

TexStar Midstream Services LP has acquired Tierra Pipeline LP from The Tierra Companies, and the companies said they have tentatively agreed on the sale of trucking operator Tierra Transportation to Black Creek Well Services, a TexStar sister company, with closing expected by July 1.

Joining the race to transition a fair amount of swaps and over the counter (OTC) business to a cleared futures model before more rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act take hold in the coming months, CME Group last week launched a broad suite of new natural gas and power contracts that will be listed as futures on CME Globex, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) trading floor and CME ClearPort, and will be available for trading on CME Direct, a platform offering side-by-side trading and straight-through processing and clearing of exchange-listed and OTC energy markets.

Joining the race to transition a fair amount of swaps and over the counter (OTC) business to a cleared futures model before more rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act take hold in the coming months, CME Group on Monday launched a broad suite of new natural gas and power contracts that will be listed as futures on CME Globex, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) trading floor and CME ClearPort, and will be available for trading on CME Direct, a platform offering side-by-side trading and straight-through processing and clearing of exchange-listed and OTC energy markets.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced Friday that the state process has begun to include natural gas vehicles (NGV) on West Virginia’s bid list for 2013 model year vehicles, following a recommendation he received from his NGV Task Force. The contract bid has been included in the state’s current purchasing bulletin, calling for 36 different vehicle models with 10 of those specified as being fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG), an announcement from Tomblin’s office said. The contract is officially out to bid, the first step towards attaining the state’s goal of using its abundant gas supplies to fuel its vehicle fleet, Tomblin said. He also said that the NGV Task Force is exploring potential partnerships “with and among natural gas producers, infrastructure developers, vehicle manufacturers and other industry leaders” to expand the state’s fueling infrastructure for CNG. The Purchasing Division will hold a pre-bid conference Aug. 22 and the bid opening is scheduled for Sept. 6. Additional information is available to prospective bidders by contacting the Purchasing Division at (304) 558-4785 or (304) 558-2306.

Despite a rig count that has declined significantly, production from the Haynesville Shale during June was climbing, which was reversing the impact of well shut-ins that began in February, an analysis by Bentek Energy LLC found.

Billing its transformation away from coal-fired generation to more natural gas-fired power as a “21st Century model,” Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. said Wednesday its utility operations in Colorado would start the new year by firing up commercial operations of two new baseload gas-fired generation plants near the Pueblo, CO, airport.

The Pennsylvania governor who led the state through the first years of the Marcellus Shale boom said the natural gas industry has “screwed up so badly” that it brought a tide of negative public opinion on itself.

A plan unveiled last Friday by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to transform its natural gas pipeline system into a role model for the industry carries a price tag of more than $1.9 billion spread over the next three-plus years, according to information released as part of the utility’s proposal to state regulators. Shareholders would absorb a little more than 25% of the total cost estimate.