Infrastructure

FERC Monday approved a stipulation and consent agreement that resolved charges that Enterprise Texas Pipeline LLC charged its shippers an unauthorized title transfer and tracking (TTT) fee that was not posted in the company’s Commission-approved statement of operating conditions.

Trunkline LNG Export LLChas awardedTechnipthe front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for the potential expansion of an existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal in Lake Charles, LA, to make it an LNG export facility (seeDaily GPI,Aug. 8). The project includes an LNG liquefaction plant with export capacity of up to 15 million tonnes per annum. The capacity could be achieved through up to three identical trains, with associated utilities and offsite facilities, as well as the reuse of the existing LNG offloading, storage and marine facilities.Air Productshas been selected to supply its C3MR liquefaction process technology for the FEED study. Technip’s operating center in Houston will execute the contract with support from the company’s center in Paris. It is scheduled for completion during the first half of 2014.

FERC has issued a favorable environmental assessment (EA) that would allow Gulf South Pipeline to build the Southeast Market Expansion Project to increase gas deliveries primarily to the Southeast.

Spectra Energy Transmission’s Texas Eastern Transmission announced an expansion to serve industrial markets in South Louisiana by Spring 2015 with shale gas supplies from multiple basins. An open season runs through Sept. 27.

Would-be exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada’s West Coast and from the Lower 48 face multiple challenges. Up north the main worry is pricing and securing contracts to support the project, while down south the main threat is of a regulatory/political nature, according to an analysis by the International Gas Union (IGU).

TransCanada Corp. won a national political boost Thursday for the proposed partial conversion of its natural gas Mainline to oil service from the Canadian Senate’s energy, environment and natural resources committee.

Shell Offshore Inc. has awarded Paris-based Technip the contract to install a subsea natural gas pipeline structure in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in the Stones field in the Walker Ridge blocks that are part of the prospective Lower Tertiary Trend.

On a national basis, compressed natural gas (CNG) as an alternative transportation fuel continued to make progress in mid-August, with developments including new conversion standards in California to hip SUV fleets on the Las Vegas Strip.

PG&E Corp. CEO Anthony Earley in a Wall Street interview Wednesday held out the possibility of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy by the company’s giant San Francisco-based combination utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), if a proposed $2.25 billion penalty by state regulatory safety staff is upheld by the five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).