Recycle

Texas House lawmakers Thursday passed a bill (HB 2767) that is intended to encourage oil and gas operators to conserve and recycle as much as possible the water they use in the energy patch.

As drillers compete for access to water for their operations, researchers are looking for new ways to reuse and recycle wastewater for the good of the environment, as well as looking ahead to the possibility of more restrictions at the state or federal level that may be imposed on underground injection wells, according to Accenture.

Range Resources Corp.’s planned five-rig drilling program for 2013 in the Mississippian Lime, which was scheduled to start up early next year, already is under way based on encouraging results from a crop of wells in the Nemaha Ridge area, the company said Thursday.

Seventeen environmental groups Wednesday filed a petition with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include the oil and gas extraction industry, particularly hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations, in its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting requirements.

Test well results and micro-seismic analysis have identified more than 200 drilling locations in the Mondak in the Upper Bakken Shale, according to initial drilling results released Thursday by Calgary, Alberta-based PetroShale.

Williams Partners LP has modified the open season for Atlantic Access, a proposed expansion of its Transco interstate pipeline, as a result of discussions with potential shippers (see Shale Daily, Feb. 7). Transco is increasing the total firm transportation capacity, offering additional firm transportation paths and revising the proposed in-service date to December 2015. The revised open season runs through July 13. Atlantic Access would connect gas supplies originating in western West Virginia and Pennsylvania to markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Gulf Coast regions. Transco is now proposing a total of six firm transportation paths under the project. Two of the three original paths have been fully subscribed. For customer inquiries, contact Gary Duvall at (713) 215-2589.

State regulators from eight states — Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, Michigan, Colorado and Pennsylvania — told the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Natural Gas Subcommittee (SEAB) that its recommendations on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) should address best practices.

FERC has granted a request of Puget Sound Energy Inc., operator of the Jackson Prairie Storage project, to build facilities to recycle natural gas to an authorized storage zone (Zone 2) at its Washington state storage facility from another zone in the formation to which gas has migrated.