Starts

Safety starts at the top of any organization, and the proof of that can be found in the wake of a number of infrastructure failures in recent years, a panel of experts said at a conference Tuesday convened by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco.

Unconventional natural gas activity supported more than one million jobs in 2010, a number that is likely to grow to nearly 1.5 million by 2015. The industry is expected to generate significant job creation, economic growth and tax revenues nationwide — in producing and non-producing states alike — according to a new report from IHS Global Insight.

After several years of processing and various starts and stops, a plan to repower an existing natural gas-fired coastal electric generation plant in North San Diego County using a fraction of the 100-acre existing prime seaside acreage was unanimously approved Thursday by the California Energy Commission (CEC). Commissioners set aside possible conflicts with local and state zoning restrictions.

With an emphasis on oil over natural gas, Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) continued to shatter company production records in barrels of oil equivalent (boe) globally and domestically, Oxy senior executives said Thursday. At 755,000 boe Oxy’s daily oil/gas production was the highest in its history; and its U.S. totals of 455,000 boe set a record for the sixth straight quarter.

Seventeen separate water withdrawals already approved in Pennsylvania by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) — mostly for natural gas operators — have been temporarily suspended because of localized stream flow levels that have fallen throughout the basin on drought conditions, officials said.

BP plc’s Atlantis project in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which suffered fits and starts before finally ramping up in 2007, is “presently not fit for service under normal engineering standards,” a lawyer for a former BP contractor — and now whistle-blower — said at a pretrial hearing in Houston Monday.

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) has accepted settlement offers from Chesapeake Energy Corp. and J-W Operating Co. on compliance matters related to natural gas well development that the commission regulates in a portion of the Marcellus Shale.

Things aren’t always what they seem. What starts as a natural gas play can become an oil/gas liquids play. Sometimes the best thing to do is circle back to your roots. But it’s important to always know where you are, especially when you’re in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.

Things aren’t always what they seem. What starts as a natural gas play can become an oil/gas liquids play. Sometimes the best thing to do is circle back to your roots. But it’s important to always know where you are, especially when you’re in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.