Underground

A green light was flashed for continued use of underground natural gas storage in California Thursday with the release of a two-year study by the nonprofit California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) that was mandated by state lawmakers in the wake of amassive methane leak from the state’s largest storage facility at Aliso Canyon.

A report analyzing the potential vulnerabilities of natural gas storage facilities and ways to address them was released Monday by a group of states organized by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and Ground Water Protection Council.

A federal judge last week ruled that an ordinance passed by a Southern West Virginia county banning the disposal of oil and natural gas wastewater in underground injection wells violates state laws and is preempted by the state’s regulatory primacy over the practice.

The natural gas storage well that has leaked for weeks at California’s largest underground gas storage facility is being plugged and eventually will be abandoned in the days ahead, but it is only one of 115 similar wells at the Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) 86 Bcf Aliso Canyon underground site that was once a producing oilfield.

While the United States has undergone a “tectonic shift” underground with the shale revolution, that shift has failed to translate to attitudes above-ground, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) she told a crowd of more than 900 from around the world attending the Energy Information Administration Energy Conference in Washington, DC.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. transferred nearly 1,100 oil and natural gas leases in and around an underground natural gas storage field in Columbiana County, OH, to Hilcorp Energy Co. in February.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. has transferred nearly 1,100 oil and natural gas leases in and around an underground natural gas storage field in Ohio, to privately held Hilcorp Energy Co.

An independent California-based geologist who has studied the Monterey Shale thinks it could eventually fulfill some of the hype surrounding its long-term reserves, but first it is going to take more serious geologic study and some small operators willing to take the risks that the big companies are not going to take.

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in a California Superior Court Thursday, seeking to get the state to enforce existing laws governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) when it is used in oil and natural gas production. The nonprofit conservation organization alleged that the state is shirking its responsibility.