Reconsider

Total Gas & Power North America Inc. (TGPNA) has asked a federal district court judge to reconsider a decision that the company may not defend itself against FERC enforcement staff allegations of natural gas trading manipulation in court — a conclusion that would effectively return the case to the Commission.

FERC has denied a request by Kern River Gas Transmission to reconsider an order that curbs the amount of collateral that may be collected from a noncreditworthy shipper to continue receiving service. Noncreditworthy shippers have credit ratings that are below investment grade.

Some of the same environmental groups that have asked FERC to reconsider a May order approving Tennessee Gas Pipelines’ Northeast Upgrade Project have asked the agency to rescind its order approving Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line’s (Transco) Northeast Supply Link project until a full environmental impact statement has been conducted.

As producers turned up the volume on their opposition to the federal government’s regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public lands, they caught a break in the long-awaited proposed rule that Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued Friday.

A major interstate natural gas pipeline group has called on FERC to “reconsider and revise” its approach to reservation charge crediting, claiming that it is not right to require pipelines to credit reservation charges for outages that occur during systemic upgrades to comply with the new pipe safety act and environmental laws.

Two environmental groups are asking the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to reconsider its decision to allow WPX Energy Inc. to drill unconventional natural gas wells into the Mancos Shale play in northwest New Mexico’s San Juan Basin.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has refused to reconsider its decision to throw out a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest. Judge Jane Richards Roth denied a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc that was requested by the Sierra Club, the Allegheny Defense Project (ADF) and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, which are appellants in the case Minard Run Oil Company v. United States Forest Service et al. (Case No. 1-09-CV-125, Appeals Docket No. 10-2332). Last September the appeals court’s three-judge panel ruled that the U.S. Forest Service could not refuse to give operators permission to drill in the forest while an environmental impact study was being conducted (see NGI, Sept. 26, 2011).

A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its decision to throw out a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest.

The energy status quo in Alaska “isn’t good enough,” and the industry, regulators, lawmakers and consumers all need to reconsider how the state handles oil and gas, according to Gov. Sean Parnell. And targeting natural gas markets in Asia, rather than the Lower 48, should be one of the things considered, he said.