Move

Looking ahead over the next decade the natural gas industry can be characterized as having excess supplies of the commodity and infrastructure that will be searching frantically for added demand, an industry strategist told the LDC Gas Forum: Rockies & West meeting in Los Angeles Tuesday.

This week’s rally in the cash market appeared ready to pack up its tents and move on as nearly all increases outside the West diminished to about a nickel or less Wednesday. Traders apparently were coming to grips with the realities of relatively little weather-based or industrial load, further fading of storage injection opportunities except in the West, and the continuing lack of tropical storm threats to Gulf of Mexico production expected to last through the rest of the 2011 season.

Encana Corp. and its partners will make a final decision about whether to move forward with a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Kitimat, BC, early in 2012, and if approved, the first shipments could begin in 2015, officials said Tuesday.

In a highly unprecedented move, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Tuesday ordered Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas and Electric Co. (SDG&E) to stop the use of helicopters until their safe use can be assured in the utility’s massive $1.9 billion Sunrise Powerlink transmission line project, the combination utility’s largest infrastructure project in four decades.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said Tuesday it is reorganizing, a move designed to assist regulators with a burgeoning workload from the state’s booming oil and gas industry in the Marcellus Shale.

The federal Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) said it plans to build a $185 million, 28-mile high-voltage transmission line to move more energy from east of the Cascade Mountains to load centers in western Oregon and Washington. The Big Eddy-Knight transmission power line would run from BPA’s Big Eddy Substation near The Dalles, OR, to a new substation four miles northwest of Goldendale, WA. Before construction can begin, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) will conduct a consistency review of the project, which falls within the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Following the USFS review, BPA will finalize contract terms and obtain all permits and approvals for a project it claims would create up to 100 new construction-related jobs. The project would be financed in part with borrowing authority included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

October natural gas fell hard Friday in a sympathetic move with free-falling equity and oil markets. October lost 17.8 cents to $3.872 and November retreated 17.6 cents to $3.990. October crude oil fared as poorly, losing $2.48 to $86.45/bbl.

Southwestern Resources Canada, a Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN) subsidiary, has decided to halt seismic testing in New Brunswick earlier than expected to protect its workers after a wave of thefts, vandalism and protests in the province by opponents of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

New Brunswick officials are standing firm in their opposition to a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the province, even as protesters against the practice in the emerging Frederick Brook Shale stage bold acts of civil disobedience.