Third

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP) expects to complete during the third quarter the sale of pipeline and gas processing assets it agreed to let go in order to win antitrust approval for Kinder Morgan Inc.’s (KMI) acquisition of El Paso Corp. Plenty of prospective buyers are sniffing around, CEO Rich Kinder told financial analysts during an earnings conference call Wednesday afternoon.

Cardinal Midstream LLC has brought a third cryogenic gas processing plant online in the Arkoma Woodford Shale, and it now has 220 MMcf/d of operated cryogenic processing capacity in the Oklahoma play. The new Tupelo Plant in Coal County, OK, is capable of processing 120 MMcf/d. Cardinal’s Coalgate Plant, an 80 MMcf/d facility, is adjacent to Tupelo, and the Atoka Plant in Atoka County, has a capacity of 20 MMcf/d. Cardinal Midstream President R. Mack Lawrence said the company was expanding its gathering system and “evaluating further processing capacity expansions given the level of drilling activity on dedicated acreage and the quality and production volume we’re seeing from the rich gas wells in the play.”

For the third time, California regulators Thursday gave the green light to Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) to embark on a proposed $1 billion, multi-year transition to an advanced metering system consistent with what all of the state’s other private-sector utilities have been doing the past five years.

Australia’s third liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction and export facility — Pluto LNG in Western Australia — is ready for start up, operator Woodside said Thursday. First gas has entered the facility’s processing train.

The buildout of infrastructure to serve growing liquids-rich natural gas production from shale plays is continuing. Driven by natural gas liquids (NGL) production out of the Rockies and the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, Enterprise Products Partners LP plans to construct two more NGL fractionators at its Mont Belvieu, TX, facility. These would provide 150,000 b/d of incremental capacity. Pipeline construction also is under way.

Shale and liquids-rich production will be the primary focus for Anadarko Petroleum Corp. this year, with dry natural gas efforts receiving less than 10% of its 2012 exploration and production budget, the Houston-based company said Tuesday.

Preliminary data released indicates that North Dakota oil and gas production continued to soar in January and the state now ranks third nationally in average daily oil production, surpassing California and following only Texas and Alaska. With the Bakken formation, North Dakota continues to ride the shale boom.

Elected officials in a third town in Colorado, Erie, on Wednesday night adopted a six-month moratorium on oil/gas development on an emergency basis, making the halt effective immediately.

Growing gas supply in the Marcellus Shale and projected growth in gas-fired power generation among southern states could mean a renaissance for the traditional Gulf of Mexico-to-Northeast pipeline business. Spectra Energy Corp. would seem to think so, as its latest project, called Renaissance Gas Transmission, would carry Marcellus gas south to Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.