Restoring

Fifty-five investment organizations and institutional investors with nearly $1 trillion in assets under management are pushing for implementation of “best practices” for hydraulic fracturing (fracking), according to a trio of shareholder groups — Boston Common Asset Management, the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) — which are spearheading the effort.

Seeking to create a uniform standard for how the oil and gas industry in the Appalachian Basin goes about drill site planning, developing and restoring the landscape once operations are complete, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has released its first Recommended Practices (RP) report.

CIG canceled a force majeure Thursday at its Mocane Field Compressor Station in Oklahoma and said it was restoring capacity there from 28 MMcf/d to 43 MMcf/d. The force majeure was declared Feb. 20 when a broken compressor pedestal and foundation issues caused severe vibrations in a compressor unit, the pipeline said.

Northern Natural Gas, operator of the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS), said construction delays have changed its tentative schedule for restoring service on MOPS following a June 12 shutdown (see Daily GPI, July 20). Nine platforms are now scheduled to be reactivated during the gas days of Friday and Saturday for pressure testing of the system and bringing the mainline back to normal operating pressure. A pig launching from the Mustang 758 platform is set for Monday of next week to clear accumulated liquids. Nominations will be accepted for Monday’s gas day for the nine platforms that were activated to facilitate the pigging activity. The pig is expected to be received at the Tivoli (TX) Plant on or before Aug. 3, where the plant is expected to take a minimum of three days to process the liquids. All platform production will be shut in during the liquids processing. Once they have been processed, the MOPS system will return to normal operations. Currently that is expected to happen Aug. 7, Northern Natural said.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) said last Monday that because of the lack of progress in restoring Gulf infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes it would begin reporting offshore production shut-ins only twice a week instead of daily going forward. Over the last three weeks, an average of about 40 MMcf/d has been added to the market, compared to more than double that during the month of November.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) said Monday that because of the lack of progress in restoring Gulf infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes it will begin reporting offshore production shut-ins only twice a week instead of daily going forward.

A political ally, the Northwest Territories government, has stepped forward to try restoring momentum to Canada’s faltering Arctic natural gas project. The territorial government is supporting the C$7 billion (US$5.6 billion) Mackenzie Gas Project so enthusiastically that it is taking a chance on angering one of its biggest constituencies, the Deh Cho aboriginal population along the southern 40% of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline.

Southern California Gas Co. expects to have about 500 customers who lost service due to Monday’s earthquake in central California back on line by Wednesday. The quake, a 6.5 magnitude, toppled a couple of buildings and a number of power poles in the town of Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County.

Continuing on towards the goal of restoring its balance sheet to health, the Williams Companies (TWC) said last week that it is finalizing a new $800 million credit facility primarily for the purpose of issuing letters of credit. The Tulsa-based company said Friday that it had completed the agreement ahead of schedule.