Resulting

Questar posted an OFO requiring all ISS customers at its Clay Basin storage facility with a negative inventory balance as of March 31, resulting from month-end allocation of storage fuel, to transfer gas in-place to bring the inventory to zero by the end of business on April 30. “An in-place transfer is required to remedy the negative inventory so further storage fuel will not be allocated in April 2011,” Questar said. Any ISS contract with negative inventory remaining at the end of April will be terminated and the balance cashed out, it added.

While federal and state officials have rehashed and are still studying the details, the severe freeze and resulting natural gas customer shutoffs last February in the Southwest have left local distribution utilities to deal with rancor in communities in which both homes and businesses were affected. One small town, Bernalillo, NM, has sued its local utility.

While federal and state officials have rehashed and are still studying the details, the severe freeze and resulting natural gas customer shutoffs last February in the Southwest have left local distribution utilities to deal with rancor in communities in which both homes and businesses were affected. One small town, Bernalillo, NM, has sued its local utility.

A “world-class” ethane cracker and ethylene derivatives facility, fed by shale gas reserves, is being evaluated by Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP for siting in the Gulf Coast region.

CenterPoint Energy officials are investigating what caused one of the company’s gas lines to explode Thursday morning around 8 a.m. in Minneapolis, MN. While the explosion and resulting fireball could be seen for miles, no injuries were reported as of Thursday afternoon and repair work was under way.

April natural gas rose Monday with traders seeing a shift to natural gas as Japan copes with possible nuclear meltdowns resulting from earthquake and tsunami damage. Technical strength was also noted. At the close April natural gas was 2.5 cents higher at $3.914 after trading as much as 16 cents higher at the open, and May added 3.1 cents to $3.976. April crude oil gained 3 cents to $101.19/bbl.

The Line 523F-100 line-lowering project is being extended by one week through March 18 due to severe weather resulting in delays, Tennessee said. The work, previously projected for completion by Friday (March 11), is causing suspension of physical flow at the Thomas Cenac 1 (CI) and Lapeyrouse Plant Dehydration meters.

Saying it has limited operational flexibility to manage imbalances in zones 0, L, 1 and 2, and due to the force majeure at Station 214 in Ohio resulting from a potential pipe rupture Thursday night, Tennessee issued an Imbalance Warning Monday requiring all delivery point operators in those zones to keep actual daily takes out of the system equal to or greater than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position. Similarly, all receipt point operators in the zones were asked to keep actual daily receipts into the system equal to or less than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the midstream sector last year got back to the all-time high level of 2006. Nearly all (94%) of the activity last year was driven by spending on gas pipelines and gas gathering and processing facilities in the United States, and shale gas plays featured prominently in that activity, according to the “IHS Herold 2011 Global Midstream M&A Review.”