storage

A New Jersey Assembly panel on Monday approved legislation to ban the treatment, disposal or storage of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the state.

Three conservation and environmental groups are seeking to stall the construction of Inergy subsidiary Central New York Oil and Gas Co.’s (CNYOG) MARC I Hub project in northeast Pennsylvania until the company corrects “serious flaws” in its invasive species management plan.

With a strong natural gas pipeline/storage infrastructure but limits on supply sources, Europe is putting more research and development into making synthetic methane from hydrogen, which some energy stakeholders think will be the future means of beefing up natural gas supplies. A number of large utilities are partnering with researchers in Germany who think this has commercial possibilities.

Enstor Operating Co. LLC said Friday it would begin accept bids for firm natural gas storage capacity at its four U.S. facilities through Oct. 20 for terms of one to five years beginning April 1.

Northwest said the Jackson Prairie storage facility will become available again for customer withdrawals on Friday’s gas day. The pipeline said it also will perform a withdrawal test that day and encouraged customers to limit banking as on-system balancing will be limited.

Columbia Gas, which had allowed two Critical Days for storage to lapse Monday (see Daily GPI, Sept. 4), said a new Critical Day will be implemented Thursday; see the bulletin board for associated restrictions. Affiliate Columbia Gulf said effective with Timely cycle nominations Wednesday it was not allowing either AutoPAL (Park and Loan) service or nominations to resolve due-pipe imbalances.

El Paso said during its annual bottom-hole survey and emergency shutdown/Department of Transportation inspection at the Washington Ranch Storage Facility, scheduled for Monday through Sept. 19, its “operational flexibility will be extremely limited as no injection or withdrawal will be possible.” This is in addition to limitations from ongoing unscheduled anomaly remediations on Lines 1100, 1103 and 1110 between the Pecos River and Guadalupe compressor stations, El Paso said in an appeal to shippers asking them to stay balanced on transportation nominations during this time.

October natural gas futures rose Thursday despite the fact that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported an increase in working gas storage higher than what many traders were expecting. The prompt-month contract ventured north of $4 for a second straight regular trading session before closing the day at $3.980, up 4 cents from Wednesday. November futures added 2.3 cents to $4.068.

Due to limited takeaway capacity during Stagecoach Storage maintenance that began Wednesday and will continue through Thursday (see Daily GPI, Sept. 6a), Tennessee said its operational flexibility to manage imbalances in Zone 4 on Line 300 between Stations 315 (Wellsboro, PA) and 321 (West Clifford, PA) is restricted. Thus it declared an Imbalance Warning for the line in Zone 4 Wednesday, requiring all delivery point operators between the two stations to keep actual daily takes out of the system equal to or greater than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position. All receipt point operators in the segment are required to keep actual daily receipts into the system equal to or less than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position.