Projects

Market dynamics will override politics and the job producing and economic stimulus effects of the gas industry will prevail in the years ahead regardless of the outcome of this fall’s presidential elections, according to panelists at the LDC Gas Forum’s mid-continent meeting in Chicago Monday.

As Canadian producers line up to export liquefied natural gas (LNG), an effort has formed to answer safety questions about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which is built into industry plans to make British Columbia (BC) shale deposits the prime supply source for LNG exports.

Illinois-based Gas Technology Institute (GTI) has signed two contracts with the California Energy Commission (CEC) totaling $3.5 million to support some energy projects in the West. With a satellite office in Davis, CA, GTI will help the CEC develop more economic natural gas-fired combined heat-power (CHP) systems and advanced waste heat recovery technology. GTI received a $1.8 million grant to develop flex-fuel CHP that can operate interchangeably on natural gas or biogas produced by anaerobic digesters at wastewater treatment plants and landfills. GTI also has a $1.73 million grant to demonstrate technology for converting high temperature (900 degrees F) exhaust gas waste heat into electricity on an average-sized industrial furnace.

Two Washington, DC-based groups representing oil and gas producers have protested the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final new source performance standards, which are aimed at restricting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sulfur dioxide emissions from onshore natural gas operations, including hydraulically fractured (fracked) wells. One of the groups is seeking a stay of the EPA’s action.

A group of companies in Ohio that raised nearly $10 million from investors for oil and natural gas development projects has filed for bankruptcy and has agreed to pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a $4.5 million judgment.

A fourth company is considering plans to build an ethane cracker in West Virginia, according to state Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette.

Under a state law (AB 118) providing up to $100 million annually, the California Energy Commission (CEC) opened its pocketbook again, doling out another $1.7 million for 15 different energy projects, including a number of natural gas vehicle (NGV) programs. More than $500,000 of the grants went to what the CEC called “green transportation” advancements.

North Dakota’s Bakken Shale-driven oil and gas production continued to rise in May from April, according to the state’s Department of Mineral Resources. Preliminary results indicated growth in nearly all of 17 counties — particularly Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams, where most of the drilling to date has occurred.

Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission LP is holding a nonbinding open season through July 31 for firm capacity on its Uniontown to Gas City (U2GC) Expansion Project, which offers shippers a new firm path from the Marcellus Shale in west Uniontown, PA, to the pipeline’s existing interconnect with Panhandle Eastern Pipeline near Gas City, IN.