Reported

El Paso reported a force majeure event on its North Mainline as the result of a leak on Line 1201 upstream of Navajo Compressor Station. Assessment of the leak and subsequent repair requires not only isolation of Line 1201 but also isolation of a portion of Lines 1204 and 1208, thus restricting operations in the area to only Line 1200, El Paso said. As a result, North Mainline capacity was reduced to 1,165 MMcf/d until further notice, representing an approximate reduction of 370 MMcf/d, or 25%, based upon Cycle 2 scheduled quantities for Wednesday. See the bulletin board for further details.

Riding the continuing wave of high oil prices, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) expects its shale well count to keep growing, drilling 150-175 wells this year in California, said CEO Stephen Chazen during an earnings conference call with financial analysts Tuesday.

Southern reported an unscheduled unit outage at Holy Trinity Compressor Station in southeast Alabama, which is the first station on its South Georgia facilities. No impact to FT service was expected, but a 40,000 Dth/d reduction in interruptible transport was likely, as well as a reduction in available peak hour capacity, Southern said.

Tesoro Corp. said it plans to spend about $50 million on rail facilities to boost Bakken Shale crude oil shipments from North Dakota to its refinery in Anacortes, WA. The San Antonio-based company said it hopes to deliver up to 30,000 b/d after the project’s completion, up from the current rate of 1,000 to 2,000 b/d. The project will include loading and unloading facilities and a unit train. Tesoro estimates construction will take between nine months to a year to complete, once the necessary permits are received.

Arthur Brisbane, who acts as the “readers’ representative,” wrote an opinion piece in the Sunday Times following accusations by critics that the newspaper and reporter Ian Urbina had used “fear mongering” to criticize the industry, comparing it to a “Ponzi” scheme with a future like Enron Corp. or the dot-com bubble (see Shale Daily, June 28). Brisbane researched the methods used by the reporter and editors and followed up with his commentary.

Gulfport Energy Corp. announced Monday that it has expanded its acreage position in the eastern Ohio portion of the Utica Shale play.

Wyoming reported receiving a $10.4 million grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to help support Gov. Matt Mead’s sage grouse protection executive order issued earlier this year. The funding is in addition to $17 million the state has already received for conserving sage grouse from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Emphasizing that the program is voluntary, the state head of the implementation team said the USFWS funds will be used to deal with sage grouse habitat fragmentation.

Exploration and production (E&P) companies are more confident about spending now than they were six months ago, Barclays Capital reported last week.

Hoping to more accurately address the cost of development on local communities, a Pennsylvania Senate committee made major changes to a proposed impact fee on Marcellus Shale wells on Tuesday.