Released

Health care providers Guthrie Health and Geisinger Health System have formed a partnership to study the health impacts of Marcellus Shale gas drilling, saying it will be “the first large-scale, scientifically rigorous assessment of the health effects of” natural gas production.

Australia’s BHP Billiton Ltd. is taking a US$2.84 billion pre-tax charge against the value of dry gas assets in the Fayetteville Shale that it acquired just last year due to weak natural gas prices and oversupply.

After 15 years working to build a market for natural gas in transportation, Seal Beach, CA-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has released a public listing of major fleet operators using natural gas vehicles (NGV) in a resources document it is calling “The Road to Natural Gas.” It is a listing of trucking companies, refuse haulers, fleet operators, airports, municipalities and other organizations that have signed new or expanded agreements with Clean Energy to provide transportation fuel and other services for their vehicles and fleets. According to the NGV fuel and infrastructure provider the report contains “only information which has not been previously announced, including recently completed stations on Clean Energy’s designated America’s Natural Gas Highway with a partner, Pilot Flying J, and at other interstate locations. Clean Energy’s report includes new customers that it expects to ultimately use hundreds of thousands of gallons of natural gas fuel every month, according to CEO Andrew Littlefair who added that his company so far this year is exceeding its own internal plans for its core refuse, airport and transit markets. “There are natural gas engines now available for more vehicle classes; the U.S. has an abundant supply of cheap natural gas, and there is a greater understanding of the economic and environmental benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel,” Littlefair said.

A Colorado State University (CSU) team led by former Gov. Bill Ritter briefed California’s oil and natural gas officials about how Colorado’s drilling rules that encompass hydraulic fracturing stipulations were able to satisfy environmental concerns — an issue California faces as legislators consider whether to establish a fracking moratorium or not (see Shale Daily, June 28).

Germany’s shale plays could hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, according to figures released last week by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), a government geosciences authority.

Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas and Electric Co. (SDG&E) and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) jointly released a positive outlook for summer energy supplies even with the continued outage of the 2,200 MW San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs). Earlier in the spring there were concerns about strained natural gas supplies and other energy infrastructure due to the absence of Songs’ baseload power in Southern California (see Daily GPI, May 7). Besides bringing back in service two mothballed natural gas-fired generation units along the Southern California coast at Huntington Beach, SDG&E’s high-voltage Sunrise Powerlink transmission line is expected to be in service soon, as well as a 230kV transmission loop in southern Orange County, Barre-Del Amo and Barre-Ellis No. 2 lines. SDG&E and CAISO still characterized this summer as “challenging” from a power supply perspective, noting that if the region experiences a prolonged heat wave, calls for conservation will be inevitable. More than 283 MW of new generation capacity came online the second half of 2011, and CAISO expects another 923 MW to be added this year by July 1, but most of its if renewable-based wind and solar projects that are intermittent and require backup from gas-fired and hydroelectric sources.

California regulatory staff has released a report urging “significant penalties” for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) lax natural gas pipeline record-keeping and alleging that some of the misclassifications had resulted in pressures that violated federal standards and presented “significant risks” to the general public and went unreported for years.

In about 18 months the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) should be able to tell the energy industry, and everyone else, just how productive the Three Forks formation, which lies below the Bakken Shale, might be.

As part of lackluster first quarter results released Wednesday, Hess Corp. said it doesn’t expect to meet production targets in the Bakken Shale this year, but warned analysts to be patient with the company while it shifts its focus from international basins toward its three liquids rich shale plays in the United States.