Regulations

Alliance Pipeline has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $500,000 for violating FERC regulations with respect to capacity auctions two years ago, specifically giving shippers a misleading impression about the amount of unsubscribed capacity on its system.

With the right regulations and a “common market” among Canada, Mexico and the United States, North America could become the 21st century version of the Middle East for hydrocarbons, a panel of experts from the three nations said Monday at a Manhattan Institute forum.

The only things preventing a continued increase in North American natural gas and oil resources will be regulations and a lack of ingenuity, an ExxonMobil Corp. executive said last week in Houston.

New Mexico state authorities on Thursday reopened a case on proposed industry-prompted modifications to the state’s “pit rule” for handling natural gas and oil drilling and production waste.

The only things preventing a continued increase in North American natural gas and oil resources will be regulations and a lack of ingenuity, executives said Tuesday in Houston.

FERC Wednesday approved the requests of three western natural gas pipelines for temporary waivers of capacity-release regulations, clearing the way for the permanent release of off-system capacity held on the Wyoming Interstate Co. (WIC) pipeline to certain shippers.

Resources for the Future (RFF) has released an update of its ongoing project to compare regulations in 31 states with current or near-future shale gas development. The latest series of maps shows more than 27 different elements of regulation nationwide.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has begun responding to market participant’s questions about the regulations stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, namely the start date for swap data reporting and the reporting of cleared swap transactions. Compliance with the final rule is required once the agency has responded to a question or clarified a Dodd-Frank issue, said Commissioner Bart Chilton (see Daily GPI, Oct. 10). But in the event the CFTC doesn’t answer questions by Friday, Chilton said, “it would not be appropriate, reasonable or responsible for the Commission to proceed against entities for non-compliance with a Dodd-Frank rule unless and until they have received a response from the agency to an existing request.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly and lawyers representing several state agencies filed briefs with the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, arguing that an appellate court erred when it said portions of Act 13, the state’s new omnibus Marcellus Shale law, were unconstitutional.