Units

The Port of Vancouver, WA, Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved a 10-year lease with a joint venture (JV) involving units of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies for a crude oil rail terminal at the port.

EQT Midstream Partners LP agreed to pay up to $650 million for Appalachian-focused Sunrise Partners LP and a new transportation agreement, the company said Monday.

There will be no quick remedy for restarting one of the units at idled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in Southern California following a recent decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) that a public hearing will be required on a request from SONGS’s operator Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) to partially restart Unit 2. This follows utility warnings that without a restart this year of the one unit, a decision may have to be made by the end of this year on whether SONGS will be retired (see Daily GPI, May 2). There is now a 25-day period for appeal of the board’s decision. As the largest baseload source of electric generation in Southern California with 2,200 MW, the loss of SONGS would require other types of generation, including more natural gas-fired capacity and various efficiency programs, particularly in the summer (see Daily GPI, March 26; Feb. 28). SCE, which is the majority owner/operator of SONGS, had been hoping to obtain swift approval to restart at 70% capacity Unit 2. Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas and Electric Co. owns 20% of SONGS and a Riverside, CA, municipal utility holds about 3%.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., whose central operations are in the Marcellus Shale, said Monday it plans to use natural gas to power hydraulic fracturing (fracking) equipment in northeastern Pennsylvania.

North American-based units of Royal Dutch Shell plc and Volvo Trucks have agreed to “collaborate and coordinate” on liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology in heavy duty commercial vehicles.

Continuing its strategy to take advantage of cheap U.S. natural gas and natural gas liquids, The Dow Chemical Co. plans to build several specialty material production units for its performance plastics franchise on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the company said last week. The plan further connects Dow’s U.S. manufacturing operations with cost-advantaged feedstocks available from shale gas.

Continuing its strategy to take advantage of cheap U.S. natural gas and natural gas liquids, The Dow Chemical Co. plans to build several specialty material production units for its performance plastics franchise on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the company said Monday.

Units of Russia’s Gazprom and Pangea LNG B.V. have struck a tentative 20-year offtake agreement for the sale of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to be produced from a floating facility sourcing gas from the Tamar and Dalit fields offshore Israel. The terminal, if constructed, would be the world’s first project-financed floating LNG (FLNG) facility.

Energy and telecommunications infrastructure are the focus of a new agreement between units of General Electric Corp. (GE) and Google that would allow GE’s Smallworld natural gas, electricity and telecommunications applications to integrate data from Google Maps. The goal is better capability for gas operators and other utilities to manage operations and system outages. GE is developing a set of small, focused applications for the Internet, mobile devices and desktop computers, and the Google mapping data is a component of that effort.