Plants

What new state requirements restricting ocean water use to cool California’s string of coastal natural gas-fired power plants have done to reshape the state’s reliance on gas-fired generation has been magnified by the unexpected loss of the 2,200 MW San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs) this year.

Kinder Morgan Upstream LLC has agreed to pay $316,000 in penalties for allegedly violating the risk management plan requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA) at its natural gas plants in Casper and Douglas, WY, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Thursday.

The price for Utica Shale acreage is rising at a surprising clip if a lease agreement signed this week by the Board of Commissioners of Columbiana County, OH, and an agent for Chesapeake Energy Corp. is any indication.

Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission LP is proposing a pipeline expansion project to carry natural gas produced in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas across the Mexican border.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. on Tuesday announced that it would lay off 70 employees from its Barnett Shale workforce and transfer other staff members, leaving about 700 in its North Texas offices.

Growing use of gas-fired power plants in the United States is helping, to a large extent, to drive down the country’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Since 2006, the United States has led the world in cutting CO2 emissions, the agency said recently.

Aggregate U.S. pressure pumping supply exceeded demand late last year and in the first three months of 2012 capacity utilization averaged 93.4%, a big turnaround in a market that had been undersupplied for two years, according to a new analysis. The shift is challenging oilfield service operators, which already were noting the squeeze in quarterly conference calls.

Some of the growing gas supply coming out of the Marcellus Shale could find a home in gas-fired power plants in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee thanks to a proposal from Spectra Energy Corp. to move gas from the booming shale play to markets southward.

The Texas Supreme Court has for a second time reversed a court of appeals judgement in a case involving a pipeline company’s use of eminent domain for a public use project and has remanded the case to a district court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”