natural gas data

Drilling and completion technology advances are powering North America’s natural gas supply growth, but down the value chain near the burner tip, the gas industry is burdened by outdated regulatory policies and needs new technology and innovation to capitalize on gas supply, speakers said at IHS CERAWeek in Houston Wednesday.

A Canadian company has submitted plans to a Berks County, PA, township to construct a gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility on 63 acres to produce gasoline and propane.

A unit of Houston-based Southwestern Energy Production Co. said Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to buy about 312,000 acres in northwest Colorado’s Niobrara Shale formation from Quicksilver Resources Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell’s SWEPI LP (Shell Western E&P). The price was $180 million, subject to closing conditions, the companies said.

Equitrans LP is seeking Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval to abandon in place some of its natural gas gathering facilities in West Virginia. The Pittsburgh-based company is proposing to abandon 4.5 miles of its certificated M-90 gathering line and appurtenant facilities, including one receipt point interconnect with a gas producer and no direct interconnects with end users, in Tyler and Doddridge counties, according to an application filed at FERC. When Equitrans acquired the facilities through a 2003 merger with affiliate Carnegie Interstate Pipeline Co., it converted them from transmission to gathering, according to the application. Since then, a valve at the interconnection between the low pressure M-90 pipeline and the M-35 pipeline has remained closed; Equitrans proposes capping the facilities west of the 1997 Hardman Meter and the closed valve “in an effort to reduce lost and unaccounted for gas.” Equitrans asked FERC to issue an order authorizing the abandonment by May 15.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc., one of the nation’s largest coal companies, agreed with the federal government on Wednesday to pay the largest civil penalty ever recorded under the Clean Water Act for more than 6,000 violations committed between 2006 and 2013.

FERC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have begun transmitting market data under terms of a pair of memoranda of understanding (MOU) to address overlapping jurisdiction and information sharing for use in analyzing market activities and protecting market integrity, the heads of the two regulatory agencies said Wednesday.

Private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP (KKR) announced Wednesday that it has closed on a $2 billion fund focused on development of unconventional oil and gas resources in North America.

Lucid Energy Group LLChas finalized a $200 million revolving credit facility that will support growth in the Permian Basin. Together with private equity commitments from EnCap Flatrock Midstream and management, the credit facility provides Lucid with $425 million in available financing. Lucid increased its capital sources to support expansion of its pipeline gathering system and natural gas processing facilities in West Texas, which serve production from the Midland Basin’s Wolfcamp and Cline shales. Lucid’s system includes more than 300 miles of high- and low-pressure pipeline delivering liquids-rich natural gas to two separate cryogenic processing complexes in Sterling and Irion counties. The company has commissioned a third cryogenic processing plant and a nitrogen rejection plant in Sterling County. The new plant will bring Lucid’s processing capacity to 120 MMcf/d. Acreage dedications to Lucid exceed 800,000 acres across an eight-county area of the Midland Basin and include Wolfcamp Shale production centered in Irion, Reagan and Crockett counties and Cline Shale production centered in Sterling County.

Frank Lindh, general counsel for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), on Monday resigned his position at the state regulatory commission to become a partner at San Francisco-based law firm Crowell & Moring LLP. A former attorney at Pacific Gas and Electric Co., (PG&E) Lindh had been the CPUC’s top lawyer since 2008 and last year he and his department were involved in a public fight between the regulatory commission and the City of San Bruno. The skirmish involved the pending fines and penalties facing PG&E for its role in the 2010 natural gas pipeline rupture and explosion that killed eight people in a residential part of San Bruno (see Daily GPI, June 28, 2013).