Questions

The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), which represents the nation’s major interstate gas pipelines, late Friday submitted answers to 120 questions posed by the Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) proposed rulemaking on pipeline safety.

Texas environmental regulators are planning to launch monitoring of Eagle Ford Shale air emissions some time next year. What has been learned from ongoing emissions monitoring in the Barnett Shale will be applied in the South Texas play, an engineer with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) told NGI’s Shale Daily.

As Pennsylvania lawmakers move to increase the bonding requirements for shale operators, a new Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) study questions whether bonding adequately ensures reclamation.

Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said last week the company continues to “evaluate all options” in an attempt to merge with Southern Union Co. but questions about whether it will attempt to trump Energy Transfer Equity LP’s latest bid went unanswered.

Information from a state regulatory commission staff audit released by a local congresswoman last week raised more questions about the thoroughness of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) maintenance repair and replacement work on its natural gas transmission pipeline system, and specifically Line 132, which suffered a tragic segment rupture in San Bruno, CA, last year.

Information from a state regulatory commission staff audit released on Monday by a local congresswoman raised more questions about the thoroughness of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) maintenance repair and replacement work historically on its natural gas transmission pipeline system, and specifically the Line 132 that had a segment rupture in a neighborhood of San Bruno, CA, last September.

After months of extolling the potential of the Utica Shale to bring jobs and revenue to Quebec, provincial officials on Friday changed course, warning that natural gas development may not be allowed to proceed.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) Monday issued additional guidance to address questions posed by the new regulations that were imposed on producers following the Macondo well blowout and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) earlier this year (see Daily GPI, April 22).

The day before the Pittsburgh City Council voted to prohibit natural gas drilling there (see Shale Daily, Nov. 17), commissioners in South Fayette Township, on Pittsburgh’s southwestern edge, voted to ban drilling in conservation areas and all residential zones, including suburban communities and rural farmland.