Pressure

California regulators on Thursday applied both the carrot and the stick to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) natural gas pipeline operations.

Despite the city’s and court’s concerns, the utility maintains there is no safety risk.

The pressure pumping industry is becoming more efficient and learning “to do more with less,” adding overall capacity for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations but also oversupplying the market and keeping pumping prices competitive for the next 12-18 months, according to analysts at UBS Securities LLC.

Physical natural gas for delivery Thursday fell on average 4 cents overall on Wednesday, with broad weakness across most trading points. Few points made it into the black, with Marcellus locations recording rebounds just shy of a dollar one day after reaching all-time lows.

Nearly 100 small earthquakes that hit northeast Ohio throughout 2011 and into early 2012 were triggered by a now-shuttered wastewater disposal well in Youngstown, according to a Columbia University researcher.

The three biggest pressure pumping providers serving U.S. operators — Halliburton Co., Schlumberger Ltd. and Baker Hughes Inc. — are facing a class action antitrust lawsuit over alleged price manipulation, which comes two weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation.

ENGlobal Corp. has been awarded a $5 million contract to provide engineering and procurement support services for a cryogenic processing plant being built in Carroll County, OH, and owned by Utica East Ohio Midstream LLC (UEO).

Pressure is mounting inside and outside Washington, DC, for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to order the retrofit or phase-out DOT-111 tank cars that are used to transport crude oil and ethanol by rail. Proponents of the effort note that a number of the tank cars involved in the fiery crash of tanker cars carrying Bakken crude in Quebec earlier this month were DOT-111 cars.

Under pressure from San Bruno, CA, officials who have asked for an investigation, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last week reshuffled two key legal positions in the three consolidated penalty cases against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) for the 2010 natural gas transmission pipeline tragedy.