Salt

Mississippi Hub LLC has filed an application at FERC seeking authorization to build a 12 Bcf high deliverability salt cavern storage facility in South-Central Mississippi.

El Paso subsidiary Southern Natural Gas Co. started an open season last Tuesday to test market interest in a new 14 Bcf salt dome gas storage project in Smith County, MS. The New Home gas storage field, which would consist of two storage caverns, would be a high deliverability, multi-cycle storage project designed to serve the Southeast via the Southern Natural mainline.

El Paso subsidiary Southern Natural Gas Co. started an open season Tuesday to test market interest in a new 14 Bcf salt dome gas storage project in Smith County, MS. The New Home gas storage field, which would consist of two storage caverns, would be a high deliverability, multi-cycle storage project designed to serve the Southeast via the Southern Natural mainline.

A federal district court in Salt Lake City late Wednesday handed the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a defeat in its fight to open up more federal lands to oil and natural gas leasing, ruling that BLM violated federal environmental laws when it sold leases on 16 parcels of so-called “wilderness-quality lands” in southern Utah.

Bobcat Gas Storage said its recent nonbinding open season drew market interest for five times the 12 Bcf of working gas capacity in its proposed salt dome storage project in St. Landry Parish, LA. The company has requested final FERC approval of the project by July 15 and expects service to begin in October 2007.

SGR Holdings LLC said Wednesday the sale of a 40% stake in the proposed 16 Bcf Southern Pines Energy Center, a new salt dome gas storage project located in Greene County, MS, to ArcLight Capital Partners has enabled the company to begin construction on the storage field. The first phase is expected to provide 8 Bcf of working gas capacity in summer 2007.

Enstor said Monday that it has started solution mining a salt formation in West Texas for Phase I of its Waha Gas Storage project. When fully developed, the storage project is expected to provide 9.5 Bcf of working gas capacity, 800,000 Dth/d of withdrawal capacity and 450,000 Dth/d of injection capacity to seven pipelines within three miles of the existing Waha Hub.

Salt Lake City-based Questar Corp. reports its Rocky Mountain exploration/production has stepped up substantially, compared with a year earlier, in the Pinedale (WY) Anticline, and it reaffirmed its guidance for E&P operations this year at 112-114 Bcfe. Questar made the announcement as part of an investor tour Tuesday of its Pinedale operations.

EnCana Corp. affiliate Starks Gas Storage LLC picked up a FERC certificate Thursday to build a two-cavern salt dome storage facility with total capacity of 29 Bcf at a location between Lake Charles, LA and the Texas border.