Southern

Southern Company plans to buy AGL Resources in a $12 billion deal, adding natural gas infrastructure in order “to play offense in supporting America’s energy future,” Southern Company CEO Thomas Fanning said Monday.

Major electric utility player Southern Company plans to buy natural gas utility AGL Resources in a $12 billion deal predicated on the need for more infrastructure to get all the shale natural gas to growing markets, particularly for power generation.

September natural gas is expected to open 6 cents higher Thursday morning at $3.88 as more distant weather forecasts turned warmer and traders prepared to deal with the uncertainty of the release of government storage data. Overnight oil markets fell.

Southern Company, the nation’s fourth-largest electric utility, is urging FERC to reject a proposed merger between Gulf South Storage Pipeline Co. LP and Petal Gas Storage LLC, arguing that such a merger would be detrimental to its more than 4.4 million retail customers.

Natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shales should double over the next five years, surpassing Rockies output levels from 2012 and accounting for “over a quarter of U.S. Lower 48 gas production,” Wood Mackenzie upstream analysts are forecasting.

Yankee Gas, Connecticut Natural Gas (CNG) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG) have filed a joint expansion plan with state regulators that would add nearly 300,000 gas customers and increase system throughputs substantially. In the shale gas era, consumers are seeking gas connections, and utilities are working to provide them (see NGI, Feb. 11).

Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. utility is only seven months into a five-year program, but when it finishes installing more than 6 million advanced meter devices for its vast array of residential and small business customers, the nation’s largest gas utility will have finished its largest capital expenditure ever.

Inexpensive shale gas has lit a fire under Connecticut gas distribution utilities Yankee Gas, Connecticut Natural Gas (CNG) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG), which have just filed a joint gas expansion plan with the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

Northern Natural Gas Co. on behalf of its business, Southern Natural Gas and Florida Gas Transmission, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for approval to abandon in place the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS), which includes offshore facilities and onshore facilities in Texas because they are “grossly underutilized.” During April, the MOPS system transported less than 6,500 Dth/d, a fraction of the system’s original design capacity of 480,000 Dth/d, Northern Natural said. In August 2012, FERC approved Northern’s request to abandon the MOPS Phase III facilities; Northern now wants authority to abandon the first two phases, which consist of about 55 miles of 24-inch diameter pipeline that begin at Matagorda Block 686 and continue to onshore facilities at Tivoli, TX. In addition to dwindling pipeline volumes, evidence demonstrates that production declines are permanent, Northern said. FERC denied Northern’s original plea to abandon the Phase I and II facilities in an April 2011 order. At that time, there were 17 production points (out of the original 30), and now there are only four production points tied into the MOPS system, Northern said.