Safety

Bankruptcy bound and hectored by regulators, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has been officially accused in a state investigation of shirking its responsibility for transmission line inspections and maintenance, helping to create an explosive mixture that led to California’s deadliest wildfire last year.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) expected to complete restoration on Tuesday for all remaining customers whose power was proactively turned off overnight Sunday for safety in response to extreme weather conditions.

In the largest natural gas safety-related settlement in New York history, Consolidated Edison agreed Thursday to pay $153 million for damages related to an explosion in 2014 that killed eight people and destroyed two buildings.

A federal judge on Monday was still considering what community requirements to place on Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) as a result of its criminal conviction last summer for its part in the 2010 natural gas transmission pipeline rupture and explosion in San Bruno, 10 miles south of San Francisco.

Natural gas and other pipeline operators are being reminded by federal regulators of their safety obligations and how those obligations are affected by the operational status of pipeline assets.

Canada announced an accelerated safety schedule Monday for stopping railway crude oil deliveries with an old generation of accident-prone tank cars that had a role in a Quebec tragedy three years ago.

Seeking to move farm natural gas service in Iowa into the 21st century, a Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. utility has proposed to state regulators that the tradition of farms drawing supplies off interstate pipelines upgrade the safety of their widely varying connections.

Hours before the deadline to submit its comments on proposed federal rules governing natural gas pipelines, the American Petroleum Institute (API) blasted the rules as “arbitrary and capricious” and urged regulators to go back to the drawing board, in part for overstating the benefits and underestimating the costs to the oil and gas industry.

California regulators on Thursday approved nearly $950 million in increased rates to support Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) natural gas storage and transmission pipeline operations.