Specific

A number of states that have laws requiring utilities to use renewable fuels to produce a specific amount of electricity are considering scaling back their mandates — or even repealing them altogether — given the prolific supply of natural gas that has caused prices to plunge.

The City of Dallas Plan Commission late Thursday voted unanimously to deny without prejudice an application by Trinity East Energy LLC for specific use permits to perform the first natural gas drilling within the city limits. The commission refused to recommend to Dallas City Council approval of the company’s plans to drill on two city-owned sites and one private site in northwest Dallas. The city-owned sites are in a floodplain, and the private site is near where a soccer complex is being developed. Drilling in a floodplain is against city ordinance, and council would need to amend the city’s floodplain ordinance before voting on zoning approvals for drilling. The city has yet to adopt a new ordinance to deal with gas drilling despite the completion earlier this year of a set of recommendations developed by the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force (see Shale Daily, Dec. 10). Dallas City Council next month is expected to have the final say on Trinity’s request.

A county court judge in Nacogdoches, TX, on Thursday dissolved a landowner’s temporary restraining order (TRO) against TransCanada Corp. that attempted to stop construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada.

A sidelight of North Dakota’s oil/natural gas boom that predates the shale plays by decades is the widespread natural occurrence of shallow-lying gas mixing with groundwater. The state’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) conducts an ongoing study that has identified gas in groundwater in 52 of the state’s 53 counties.

In response to the booming development in the Bakken Shale play, Kinder Morgan Interstate Gas Transmission LLC (KMIGT) is seeking FERC authorization to transfer a portion of its Pony Express natural gas pipeline to an affiliate to transport crude from the Bakken to key refinery centers.

A former director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the last President Bush called the agency’s efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and natural gas production on public lands “senseless.”

Only a day after issuing them, Tennessee lifted two meter-specific Balancing Alert OFOs. The pipeline also said it continues investigation of a November rupture near Main Line Valve (MLV) 205-4 in Morgan County, OH, about four miles southeast of the city of Glouster (see Daily GPI, Nov. 21, 2011). Currently line 4 is isolated and Tennessee is maintaining a reduced pressure from Station 200 in Greenup, KY, to Station 219 in Mercer, PA. The Rockies Express (REX) interconnect flows into Line 4 between MLVs 208 and 209. To further evaluate the section between the valves, Tennessee was required to reduce the pressure there. Thus it was not accepting any nomination increases at the REX meter Tuesday and effective Wednesday until further notice will not accept any nominations at all from the REX meter.

Saying it needed to protect system integrity and due to excessive hourly takes exceeding scheduled quantities, Tennessee issued meter-specific Balancing Alert OFOs Monday affecting two LMSMA contracts (71054 and 943030). They are required to maintain an actual daily flow rate not exceeding 2% or 500 Dth, whichever is greater, of scheduled quantities.

It was still cold along the East Coast Wednesday, with some cities in Florida having established date-specific records for low temperatures the day before. But forecasts of widespread warming trends either already getting under way or starting Thursday caused prices to plummet by triple digits at quite a few Northeast trading points. Outside the Northeast, the market was close to evenly divided between small gains and small losses.