Regulatory

The prolonged leak of a well at the Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage field has left the industry, state regulators and the multi-billion-dollar Sempra Energy utility in the cross-hairs of climate change activists like the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), whose representatives on Friday called for a re-evaluation of the future role of natural gas in the nation’s energy mix.

Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) and the regional air pollution regulators have agreed to pursue a plan to capture and burn at least part of the escaping emissions at SoCalGas’ two-month-old natural gas storage well leak on the northern suburban fringe of Los Angeles (see related story), following an all-day public hearing last Saturday in the Porter Ranch residential area impacted by the leak.

Local distribution companies’ (LDC) rusty old steel pipes have a silver lining: they offer organic growth opportunities that can often be easily financed through the rate base, according to Fitch Ratings. This is helping make LDCs the growth play in the broader utilities sector.

FERC on Thursday approved Las Vegas, NV-based Southwest Gas Corp.’s Paiute Pipeline Co. to put in service its new 35.2-mile, eight-inch diameter natural gas pipeline lateral in Elko, NV, with new interconnections to the interstate Ruby Pipeline LLC, running from Wyoming to the Oregon-California border. Paiute asked the federal regulators on Tuesday for approval and it was granted based on a Dec. 15 inspection and supplemental photo documentation regarding right-of-way restoration. Paiute built and will operate the line as part of it $35.2 million Elko Area Expansion Project for which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved the pipeline right-of-way earlier this year (see Daily GPI, Dec. 15, 2015).

FERC has approved construction of Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s Utica Access Project for in-service during the fourth quarter. And separately, Columbia Gas has applied at the Commission to construct its WB XPress Project in West Virginia and Virginia.

Defending its 2014 approval of Dominion Cove Point LNG Liquefaction Project’s export terminal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit this week, FERC roundly dismissed a claim from several conservation groups that its environmental assessment did not properly consider how the project could lead to increases in unconventional natural gas drilling.

Following on a number of headline-grabbing attacks on oil companies’ climate change policies in 2015, American Petroleum Institute (API) President Jack Gerard’s remarks to kick off 2016 suggest the lobbying group’s rhetoric is evolving to recast the role of fossil fuels — and natural gas in particular — in the climate debate.

With implications for the future volumes of natural gas used for electric generation, the state of Washington and a California public sector utility are the latest to push for reducing coal use and enacting a carbon tax.

The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday approved Florida Power & Light Co.’s (FPL) proposed Okeechobee Clean Energy Center (OCEC) Unit 1, a 1,600 MW natural gas-fired, combined cycle power plant.