Senate

The Indiana Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will hear a case involving a 30-year contract for the state to purchase coal-to-substitute natural gas (SNG) from a proposed $2.8 billion gasification plant in southwestern Indiana.

Dubbing it the nation’s most stringent, the Illinois state Senate on Friday passed oil and natural gas drilling regulations (SB 1715), sending the proposed provisions to Gov. Pat Quinn for his signature. The governor is expected to sign the bipartisan legislation.

The Texas Senate has passed HB 2767, which is intended to encourage the recycling of wastewater from drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations for reuse rather than injection of the waste into disposal wells. The legislation aims to clear up legal ambiguities around responsibility for transferred drilling waste.

Nevada’s state Senate on Wednesday gave unanimous approval to a utility-backed proposal (SB 123) to retire coal-fired generation in the state and to usher in more natural gas-fired and renewable generation in the years ahead. SB 123 now goes to the lower house Assembly for action.

The Texas Senate on Friday passed a bill (HB 788) intended to make the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) the state’s permitting authority for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sources, sidestepping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where permitting bottlenecks are said to be holding up projects.

The House has introduced legislation to open federal waters off the coast of Virginia to oil and natural gas development, and the Senate is expected to offer a companion bill in the coming weeks. Virginia lawmakers in Congress and at the state level have pressured the Interior Department to open the coastal waters to offshore development for years (see NGI, July 11, 2011). The Virginia Jobs and Energy Act (HR 1782), introduced by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA), mandates that Lease Sale 220 be conducted within one year and that one lease sale be held in subsequent five-year oil and gas leasing programs. Co-sponsors are Virginia Republican Reps. Rob Wittman, Robert Hurt and Morgan Griffith. During the last Congress, Rigell introduced similar legislation (HR 3882) after the Obama administration shut down exploration off of Virginia’s coast. Provisions of the bill passed the House in 2012 as part of a larger energy package, but it failed to make it out of Congress.

A compilation of suggestions the Senate Finance Committee has received for reforming taxes on the energy sector can be boiled down to three basic ideas: modify the tax code, replace it, or eliminate it outright.

A bill that would allow companies to classify as trade secrets chemicals and concentrations used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluids passed the muster of a key committee on Tuesday, and is nearing final passage in the West Virginia Legislature.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scheduled three forums on natural gas issues in May. The forums, which would be held in a roundtable format “to encourage discussion and allow flexibility to find areas of agreement,” would include input from members and a variety of stakeholders, according to committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Topics for the forums are “Infrastructure, Transportation, Research and Innovation” (May 16), “Domestic Supply and Exports” (May 21) and “Shale Development: Best Practices and Environmental Concerns” (May 23).