April 2015, Vol. 242, No. 4

Advertisers from the print edition of Pipeline & Gas Journal April 2015, Vol. 242, Number 4.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo: Get your butt out of Albany and go see how the rest of your state lives. Or you might not have much of a state left. One memory that stands out from my 1970s tenure as a reporter in New York’s Southern Tier is that of an economy stuck in reverse. Broome County centers around Binghamton, a city of 47,000 that has lost nearly half its population since the 1950s.

Nick “Big Bully” Busick knows something about safety. In fact, he knows a lot about safety. You don’t step into the ring against the likes of the legendary Abdullah the Butcher without knowing how to keep yourself safe or you won’t survive 10 seconds against someone like the 400-pound madman from Sudan, who has torn apart more than one opponent’s face with his teeth, a pencil or whatever his favorite foreign object of the moment happens to be.

Energy consumption costs are on the rise. Similarly, pipeline schedulers and managers’ energy are increasingly consumed by challenges to keep pipeline operations running in a smooth and cost-effective manner. The time and extensive management commitment required to reduce energy consumption and increase productivity can actually be a net cost to operators and their businesses. To avoid this, the addition of an automated and fully integrated pipeline scheduling system can add tremendous value and cost savings to a company.

With the increase of natural gas production throughout the United States, the LNG market is growing at a rapid pace. Due to that growth, there has been a significant increase in development of small-scale, mid-scale, and large-scale LNG facilities, as well as expansion opportunities of existing facilities. Proper design of a facility concept will start with the application of good engineering practices and relevant design standards followed by a preliminary siting and feasibility study to determine whether a particular parcel of land is appropriate for the proposed project.

With energy security and climate change at the top of the global agenda, carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) is gaining momentum. CCUS technology offers a solution supporting production of incremental hydrocarbon reserves from existing fields while storing CO2 away from the atmosphere.

As the worldwide demand for energy drives new investments in oil & gas exploration, production, and transportation, an increased need for visibility into flow measurement across the enterprise comes with it. The market not only requires accurate flow metering for upstream, midstream, and downstream applications, but also needs to be able to access this information across the enterprise.

Despite a recent bump in oil prices, the industry remains largely in retreat as large companies such as Marathon Oil, Apache and ConocoPhillips continue to announce plans to slash capital budgets. With the oil and gas industry already feeling the drain of skilled workers and executives leaving due to retirements, there is some fear a prolonged decline will hasten further departures of valued personnel. Layoffs throughout the oil patch have already surpassed the 100,000 mark worldwide, according to Bloomberg.

Pipeline Research Council International (PRCI), which has led the drive for more reliable pipeline technologies since 1952, recently selected new research projects to fund for the coming year. In an energy environment increasingly focused on safety and driven by regulatory concerns, its members chose to concentrate on improving inline inspection (ILI), preventing third-party intrusions along rights-of-way and compiling data that could enable changes from the EPA over compressor pump regulations.

As another brutally cold winter whips through the Northeast, it’s a good time to be in the fuel business, knowing that your product is helping keep people alive and businesses open. Yet in states like New York where oil and gas production is not appreciated as it should be, the business is quite challenging.

Australia, with much of the country yet to be explored, has the largest proven gas reserves in the Asia-Pacific region, about 43 Tcf, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)? country analysis from August 2014. Most of the traditional gas reserves, about 92%, are located in the North West Shelf in the Carnarvon and Browse basins in North West Australia and the Bonaparte Basin shared between Australia and East Timor, the Gippsland and Otway basins in South East Victoria Province, and the Cooper-Eromanga basin in central Australia (Figure 2).

In an environment that is exhibiting disruption and change, being nimble is a necessity. The concept of being flexible rather than rigid in the face of change is one that for many industry participants is counterintuitive. Bruce Lee might have said it best when he suggested, “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Even in the midst of an oil price crash globally, alternative fuels for transportation stimulate conversation at just about any business or public policy gathering, and increasingly natural gas has had a ringside seat for those discussions. In fact, even sustainability advocates who see zero-emission as the ultimate goal give the natural gas sector credit for creating more interest in alternative fuels, particularly among businesses.

Members of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) are taking concrete steps to reduce methane emissions from their systems and have made commitments to find ways to curb releases even further.

Based in Queensland, Australia, the GLNG project involves gas field developments in southeast Queensland and an LNG plant on Curtis Island, near Gladstone. Sanctioned in January 2011, GLNG includes the development of coal seam gas (CSG) resources in the Bowen and Surat Basins, construction of a 420-km underground gas transmission pipeline to Gladstone, and two LNG trains with a combined nameplate capacity of 7.8 mtpa on Curtis Island. The project has an estimated gross capital cost of US$18.5 billion and is on track for first LNG in the second half of 2015.

The Offshore Technology Conference 2015 (OTC 2015) set for May 4-7 at NRG Park in Houston will bring together more than 100,000 industry leaders and buyers from 130-plus countries, all of whom want to explore how technology, best practices and emerging trends can provide the energy needed for the world.

The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) wants the EPA to revise its proposed requirement that interstate and intrastate pipelines measure emissions from pipeline blowdowns. This would expand an existing greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting rule which already cover s compressors and other equipment.

The Energy Information Administration reported March 12 that the decline in spot oil prices in the last half of 2014 and first month of 2015 has reduced oil and natural gas production tax revenues in some of the largest oil- and natural gas-producing states.

Pembina Pipeline Corp. plans to expand the Vantage pipeline system for an estimated $85 million. The expansion entails increasing Vantage's mainline capacity from 40,000 bpd to 68,000 bpd through the addition of mainline pump stations and the construction of a 80-km, 8-inch gathering lateral. The mainline expansion is supported by a long-term, fee-for-service agreement, with a substantial take-or-pay component. The gathering lateral is underpinned by a fixed return on invested capital agreement. The expansion is expected to be in-service in early 2016.

Sempra Energy announced that its IEnova and Sempra LNG units have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a subsidiary of Pemex, Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, for development of a natural gas liquefaction project at the Energía Costa Azul receipt terminal in Ensenada, Mexico. Pemex would have the opportunity to become a customer, natural gas supplier and investor. "This is an important first step in working with Pemex on the development of liquefaction facilities at Energía Costa Azul," said Mark A. Snell, president of Sempra Energy.

Tallgrass Development, LP and AGL Resources Inc. concluded the non-binding open season for the proposed Prairie State Pipeline. The system would move natural gas from supply connections in central Illinois to the Chicago Market Center and points in between. Prairie State Pipeline is being jointly developed by Tallgrass and AGL Resources and is expected to have ownership participation by both companies should binding commitments be finalized with interested market participants.

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