Shale Daily

FERC has approved North Dakota Pipeline’s proposed tariff structure involving committed rates for priority and non-priority service, and uncommitted rates and apportionment principles based on Commission precedent, for the company’s Sandpiper project, which would provide Bakken crude producers access to downstream markets at a new interconnection point at Superior, WI.

Canadian shale oil hunters are embarking on the pursuit of rich deposits believed to have migrated north from the United States and become trapped by dense rock beneath the plains of Saskatchewan eons before the border existed.

In the state with the nation’s second-highest drilling rig count, Oklahoma elected and industry officials are considering an across-the-board hike of the tax on oil/natural drilling, but it would still be considerably lower than a counter proposal by a billionaire philanthropist in Oklahoma City.

An oil spill Thursday morning on the Plains All American Pipeline in Los Angeles near the concrete-covered Los Angeles River, which long ago was turned into a regional flood control system, was contained before it could cause serious damage.

A trio of lawmakers supporting oil and natural gas drilling in North Carolina introduced a bill Thursday that would extend the deadline for the state to develop its own regulatory program; create a new Oil and Gas Commission; reconstitute the state’s Mining and Energy Commission (MEC); invalidate local bans on oil and gas activities; ban wastewater injection wells, and establish a severance tax.

The environmental virtues of cheap, abundant and clean-burning natural gas from shale plays are offset somewhat by methane emissions that occur during gas production and transport — but not so much as to sound alarms for Duke University researchers who have studied natural gas and climate change issues.

Frontier Midstream Solutions LLC said Alpha Crude Connector LLC (ACC) is developing a 400-mile crude oil pipeline with multiple truck racks and more than 300,000 bbl of storage capacity in the northern Delaware Basin of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Initial capacity is to be 100,000 b/d serving multiple delivery points and accessing area refineries, rail outlets and major downstream pipelines, Frontier said. ACC is expected to file for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to operate as a common carrier pipeline, with an open season expected in June. Completion of the project is expected during the second half of 2015. ACC is a joint venture of Frontier and Concho Resources Inc., which has struck a long-term transportation agreement with ACC.

Crude oil from the Bakken Shale isn’t significantly more dangerous than crude from other plays to transport by rail and poses a lower transport risk than other flammable liquids, but it may contain higher amounts of dissolved flammable gases compared to heavier crudes, according to a report commissioned by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM).

The Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 55-35 in favor of a bill that would levy a 2.5% severance tax on oil and natural gas produced from horizontal wells, most of which target the Marcellus and Utica shales.