West

Consol Energy has drilled its first Upper Devonian Shale well, in Greene County, PA, with results that bode well for the 300,000 acres it controls with commercial Upper Devonian potential.

Construction is expected to begin “shortly” on the 550-acre Permian Rail Park in Texas about six miles west of Big Spring and 30 miles east of Midland, developers said.

FERC on Friday issued a favorable environmental assessment (EA) of Tallgrass Interstate Gas Transmission’s proposal to convert the Pony Express Pipeline to meet the increasing demand for crude oil transportation service out of the Bakken formation.

As part of its continuing investigation into the rupture of a Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline in West Virginia in December, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has made more than 1,400 pages of documents on the pipeline explosion available to the public.

In the article “Consol-Noble JV to Build Marcellus Dry Gas Pipeline” (see Shale Daily, May 29), it was incorrectly reported that a 24-inch diameter dry natural gas pipeline in West Virginia would be completed in six to nine months. The joint venture plans to begin construction of the pipeline in six to nine months, and the time to build and complete the pipeline would be an additional six to nine months. NGI’s Shale Daily regrets the error.

Expressing “alarm” that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is not registering all swap dealers that are active in energy markets, six prominent West Coast senators said they are “increasingly concerned” that the $8 billion annual de minimis threshold exemption in the agency’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act rules may allow the vast majority of the energy swap market to fly under the regulator’s radar.

While there continues to be uncertainty among more than a half-dozen proposed West Coast projects in British Columbia, the backers of two long-standing liquefied natural gas (LNG) export-import projects in Oregon told NGI Wednesday they are alive and well and several steps ahead of their competitors in western Canada.

Enterprise Products Partners LP plans to “significantly” expand its crude oil storage and distribution infrastructure serving the southeast Texas refinery market, the partnership said Thursday. The move is in response to the displacement of imported waterborne crude by domestic supply from unconventional basins.

Two workers were killed and three others hospitalized Friday morning in an oil well blowout in the Bone Spring tight sands formation in West Texas, near Barstow.