News

Those who worry that export of liquefied domestic natural gas will invite global oil price volatility into the U.S. gas market are forgetting about fungibility, Rice University energy fellow Ken Medlock said during a recent presentation.

A check, which says markets, not boosters, decide the fate of projects, is built into the biggest plan for exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from new terminals on the northern Pacific Coast of British Columbia (BC).

Denver-based SM Energy Co. is marketing all of its properties in the Anadarko Basin, including its Granite Wash interests. The sale of the gas-weighted assets is part of normal high-grading activities, the company said. Proceeds could be spent in the Permian Basin or in the Eagle Ford Shale, analysts speculated last week.

Dry natural gas production in the United States, boosted by stronger pipeline flows from the Marcellus Shale, led Goldman Sachs analysts last week to revise their forecasts down for prices and lift expectations for end-of-summer storage levels.

Production in the Marcellus Shale over the past few years “has been nothing short of epic,” and it is straining infrastructure to the point that the Appalachian region is in need of larger interstate connections, said Genscape Inc. senior natural gas analyst Andy Krebs.

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said Thursday it plans to develop a proposed rule requiring companies who make chemical substances and mixtures used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to report data on the chemicals.

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. is planning to build production through the rest of this year from its substantial asset base in the Appalachian Basin after being knocked back early this year from a lack of pipeline capacity for natural gas liquids (NGL), CEO Gary Evans said last week.

TransCanada Corp.’s first quarter earnings were positively impacted by the recent decision by Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) on the company’s Mainline restructuring proposal, the company said Friday. TransCanada also pushed back the in-service date of its long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline to late 2015 from the previously planned late 2014/early 2015 due to regulatory delays.

The California Public Utilities Commission has approved a 50% increase in the working capacity of one of the state’s largest merchant-based underground natural gas storage facilities, Wild Goose Storage LLC, north of Sacramento. Regulators unanimously agreed that Wild Goose may expand its working capacity from 50 Bcf to 75 Bcf, the third expansion since it was opened as the state’s first competitive storage facility in 1999. Wild Goose is interconnected with two major gas transmission pipelines of San Francisco-based combination utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which operates its own network of underground storage facilities in Northern California, totaling more than 100 Bcf of working capacity.