Panel

Executives with ties to the energy industry told a Senate panel that delays in the current federal permitting process for infrastructure projects, including for natural gas pipelines, are unreasonable, create uncertainty and higher costs for the sector.

A leading Pennsylvania state senator is once again seeking co-sponsors for a bill that would create a long-considered Marcellus Shale Health Advisory Panel to study the impacts of the unconventional natural gas industry and help inform public policy decisions.

More than three years after Northern Natural Gas Co. was allowed to condemn more than 9,000 acres in south-central Kansas to contain gas migrating from an underground storage facility, the company got the bill for its action: about $7.3 million. That is far less than what landowners and oil/gas producers were seeking.

The only possible land mine for continued robust growth in U.S. natural gas supplies in the next five years would be an outright ban or oppressive national regulation of the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in America’s revitalized oil/gas fields, according to a panel of bullish experts assembled on the opening day of the LDC Gas Forum Mid-Continent in Chicago Monday.

Members of a panel testifying at a hearing of a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs subcommittee last week warned that allowing global conglomerates to own multiple pieces of the production and marketing chain for any commodity, including oil and natural gas, while simultaneously also speculating on the price of those commodities, opens the door to potential manipulation of prices.

The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Tuesday called on a Senate panel to support President Obama’s request for additional funds for the agency in fiscal year (FY) 2014 so that it can protect the derivatives and futures markets from fraud, manipulation and other abusive practices.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told a Senate panel Thursday that the public comment period on the proposed hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule would be extended by 60 days, giving producers, state regulators and environmentalists a total of 90 days to pore over the 171-page document.

A panel of marketing representatives for several industrial giants was convened in mid-May by the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority (WIA) to look at how quick-start natural gas-fired generation can mitigate the increased variability on the electric grid due to increased wind and solar-based power supplies.

An executive with a Portland, OR-based heavy-duty truck maker told a Senate energy panel Tuesday that he and his competitors could manufacture as many natural gas vehicles (NGV) as needed if only Congress delivered on the refueling infrastructure.