Infrastructure

Williams Partners LP and DCP Midstream Partners LP have brought online ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) natural gas pipeline infrastructure about 300 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.

More than a year after it won state regulators’ approval to offer a utility-sponsored natural gas vehicle (NGV) fueling program (see Daily GPI, Jan. 18, 2014), Portland, OR-based NW Natural is still struggling to complete its first deal for compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling.

In the opening weeks of the California state legislature, proposals have surfaced with a clean energy emphasis, promoting renewables and alternative transportation fuel use. One proposal also would seek to mandate that the state’s two public employee retirement funds divest interests in coal companies.

Dominion CEO Tom Farrell says his company’s pipeline infrastructure makes up “the spine of the Marcellus/Utica shale.” On Monday he outlined how Dominion is working a slate of producer-push and market-pull infrastructure projects to meet the region’s continually growing demand for takeaway capacity.

Six years after FERC granted Orbit Gas Storage a certificate of public convenience and necessity for construction and operation of a proposed underground natural gas storage facility in Hopkins County, KY, the company has asked the Commission to vacate the certificate due to changed market conditions.

It doesn’t take a polar vortex to drive throughput on Spectra Energy’s Northeast/New England pipelines to peak levels. Comparatively modest weather combined with power generation demand is enough to do the trick, said a pipeline executive with the company, which now is engaged in a demand-pull system expansion targeting the region.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. is developing a program for some of its utilities in seven states to initiate ratepayer purchases of natural gas reserves from its exploration and production (E&P) segment.

The Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern United States could plug into growing Canadian clean power sources through a new underwater transmission line under a plan submitted to the National Energy Board (NEB).

While the recent rapid drop in crude oil prices has been likened to the price collapse of 1986, a rebound is not likely to take 14 years as the 80’s crash did, according to Rusty Braziel, a veteran of the oil and gas industry during that time.