Infrastructure

Natural gas used in transportation is facing an uphill battle competing for funds in California’s $100 million annual alternative/renewable vehicle grant program, according to a revised staff report at the California Energy Commission (CEC), which administers the six-year-old program.

A coalition of 165 environmental groups, led by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, have asked Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to launch an investigation into FERC, alleging that the commission is biased toward pipeline companies.

New safety regulations for hazardous liquid pipelines proposed by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) would cost more than regulators’ estimate, according to comments filed late last week by the Gas Processors Association (GPA).

Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) unit reported Monday that it expects to stop the nearly three-month-old natural gas storage well leak at its Aliso Canyon underground facility “by late February, if not sooner.”

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California have submitted testimony in its criminal case against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), alleging that shoddy recordkeeping contributed to a 2010 natural gas pipeline rupture and explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno, a suburb south of San Francisco.

The Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal will ship its first cargo later than initially thought, according to an announcement Thursday by Cheniere Energy Partners LP.

At least 68 major oil and natural gas projects worldwide, worth a total of $380 billion and holding an estimated 27 billion boe of commercial reserves, have been shelved since late 2014, with deferred U.S. oil projects accounting for most of the losses, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

FERC should weigh Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. LLC’s (Transco) Virginia Southside Expansion Project II and its Atlantic Sunrise Project simultaneously as they both involve work at the same existing compressor station in Virginia, environmentalists told the Commission in a motion to intervene out of time.

Vermont regulators have agreed to allow Vermont Gas Systems Inc. to complete construction of a 41-mile natural gas pipeline extension in the western part of the state, after the utility agreed to cap the amount it would recover from ratepayers for the project. The cost of the project has increased more than 78% since it was approved two years ago.