September 2015, Vol. 242, No. 9

Advertisers from the print edition of Pipeline & Gas Journal, September 2015, Vol. 242, No. 9

OK, I’m a sucker for natural gas. Maybe I’ve learned something these past 25 years that George Mitchell tried to explain: natural gas is the fuel of the future and can revitalize America. After I read this story off the Reuters news wire, can you blame me?

<em>Editor’s note: This update, provided by the Kenai Peninsula Borough mayor’s office, is part of an ongoing effort to help keep the public informed about the Alaska LNG project.</em> Alaska is vast, with a lot of open ground, but it seems like transportation projects in the state - be it roads, railroads or pipelines – can’t help but cross over or under each other while traversing the same natural corridors.

In the five years since the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, operators have undergone progressively tighter regulatory restrictions in both offshore and onshore environments. Along with restructuring the Department of the Interior to include the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), more than seventeen reforms have been implemented since the 2010 accident, targeting everything from well-design to maintenance reviews to safety culture.

As Mark Miller, a senior oil and natural gas executive with years of experience, was addressing a Baker Hostetler Shale Symposium in Houston in mid-2015 he could not resist the opportunity to talk about a favorite subject, “the transfer of knowledge to the next generation of workers” in the industry and an industry-backed program in Houston schools. It involves early energy education for high school students.

In the oil and gas industry, there is not and never will be a priority higher than the safety of a company’s employees. Go to any industry conference and you’ll see how seriously the topic of safety is taken. It bears repeating: safety is job one. Exterran, a Houston-based compression company, realizes that an effective safety program always starts from the top. Brad Childers, Exterran’s president and CEO, clearly understands that as does the National Safety Council (NSC) which earlier this year singled out Childers as one of just nine CEOs in the United States who do “get it.”

At the first-of-its-kind Distribution Contractors Association/American Gas Association (DCA/AGA) Utility Contractor Workshop in Chicago, presenters and attendees were single-minded in their focus on one goal: to ensure the growing contractor workforce has the requisite knowledge to safely build the nation’s gas distribution infrastructure while expanding the contractor workforce to meet the needs of utility main replacement and expansion programs. With plans at many utilities to accelerate programs aimed at replacing aging pipeline systems, meeting this goal is more important than ever.

“I want to tell you something,” he said to me on many occasions during the quarter-century of our relationship. “As long as I’ve been in this business, I’m still learning because there’s still so much I don’t know.” That was Carol Freedenthal, one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. So smart, in fact, that he was always the first to admit he still had so much to learn about a changing business in an even faster changing world. For someone like me, who would never know a tenth as much about the business as he did, those words taught me a lifelong lesson.

House members of both parties drubbed the latest top PHMSA official to appear before Congress to answer questions about lagging pipeline safety rule implementation.

Since the oil price collapse, global oil production has risen, not fallen. Since the fateful Nov. 27, 2014 OPEC meeting, aggregate production from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Iraq is up 2 MMbop/d – far more than demand. November is also when the U.S. inadvertently became the swing oil producer. Prices have not yet fallen far enough or for long enough for an appreciable U.S. supply adjustment to occur. It may not be far off, especially if oil prices fall further with new Iranian supplies, says a study from IHS Energy that notes:

What more can you say about Kevin Bodenhamer other than he has had a career that most people in the pipeline business can only dream of having. His professional accomplishments can fill a whole page so let’s start with the resume: • 1979-1993, engineer, supervising manager for Cities Service/Occidental Petroleum/Trident NGL. • 1993-1998, manager, Mid-America Pipeline Co. • 1998-2002, director, Williams Cos. • 2002-2013, vice president, senior vice president, Enterprise Products. • 2013-2015, vice president, chief engineer, Willbros Engineers Inc.

In today’s commodity environment, being aware of ongoing decisions by producers and midstream players regarding planned projects is a critical component to understanding the future natural gas infrastructure landscape. Experienced analysts collect and interpret the information to deliver a streamlined approach for understanding and quantifying the influence of planned projects on the market. Up-to-date, reliable insight into these decisions reduces blind spots for traders so they can make more informed, longer-term decisions.

Natural gas producers regularly have to meter wet gas flow. Separator systems or multiphase wet gas meters are beneficial but the economic reality of many applications is that standard gas meters must be used. Hence, understanding the wet gas performance of gas meters is important.

The boom in U.S. shale plays and Canadian oil sands has provided North America with a huge new source of petrochemical and energy-generation feedstock. For the most part, the results of this “shale boom” have been quite positive. But the sudden abundance of oil and natural gas is putting pressure on North America’s existing pipeline infrastructure, which simply cannot cope with this additional demand. This pressure is compounded by the fact that most of this new oil and gas production is happening in regions not currently served by the existing pipeline infrastructure (Figure 1).

A Pragmatic Approach to Understand Indian Natural Gas Market Historically, India has relied on coal to generate power, liquid fuels as feedstock and oil for its transport sector. But for environmental reasons India needs to focus on cleaner fuels. Natural gas has emerged as the fuel of choice for many industries in India owing to its environmental benefits and higher economic efficiency. However, India’s natural gas market is seeing a supply deficit due to its low domestic production.

<strong>Association News</strong> The American Gas Association (AGA) was selected as one of The Washington Post’s Top Workplaces for 2015. “It’s an honor to be included,” said Dave McCurdy, president and CEO of AGA.

With liquids pipeline incidents down by half since 1999, even as their use to transport crude oil pipeline has increased, there is little doubt among experts about what has led to this success on the safety front – preventive maintenance and integrity management programs.

A Today in Energy brief from the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Algeria is reforming its laws to attract foreign investment in hydrocarbons. Algeria is the third-largest oil producer in Africa, after Nigeria and Angola, and the largest natural gas producer in Africa. However, production of both oil and natural gas has declined over the past decade.

2H Offshore, an Acteon company, was awarded two separate contracts, one by Hess Corp. and a second by Enbridge Energy Co., to verify the design, fabrication and installation phases of the Steel Catenary Risers (SCRs) for the Stampede field development in the Gulf of Mexico. The field is operated by Hess.

Bechtel was selected by Delfin LNG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fairwood Peninsula Energy Corp., to perform front-end engineering and design for the first U.S.-based floating liquefied natural gas vessel (FLNGV) to go into service at Port Delfin. Port Delfin is a proposed deepwater port and floating LNG facility that will be located about 50 miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, LA. Upon the final investment decision, Bechtel is expected to design, build and commission the FLNGV. Plans call for Port Delfin to receive natural gas from the Delfin Offshore Pipeline.

Phillips 66, Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners have formed a joint venture to build the Bayou Bridge pipeline that will deliver crude oil from the Phillips 66 and Sunoco Logistics terminals in Nederland, TX to Lake Charles, LA. The venture will also launch an expansion open season for service to the market hub in St. James, LA. Phillips 66 holds a 40% interest in the joint venture and Energy Transfer and Sunoco Logistics each hold a 30% interest. Sunoco Logistics will be the operator of the system.

Oryx Midstream Services, LLC announced that one of its operating subsidiaries, Oryx Southern Delaware Oil Gathering and Transport LLC (collectively, “Oryx”), has launched a binding open season to obtain volume commitments and/or acreage dedications to support the development of the Oryx Trans Permian pipeline system (“OTP”), a new crude oil gathering and transportation system to serve the liquids-rich southern Delaware Basin in Texas. The binding open season commenced today, September 30, 2015, at 8 a.m. CDT and is scheduled to conclude at 5 p.m. CDT on October 29, 2015.

Sempra Energy’s Mexican unit Infraestructura Energética Nova, S.A.B. de C.V. (IEnova), through its subsidiary Gasoducto de Aguaprieta S. de R. L. de C.V., has been awarded a natural gas transportation contract in Chihuahua by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). The project includes a header facility with a capacity of 3 Bcf/d of natural gas and a 14-mile pipeline with a capacity of 1,135 MMcf/d. The pipeline will provide gas to the Norte III Combined Cycle Power Generation Plant and will interconnect with Gasoductos de Chihuahua, Tarahumara and Samalayuca-Sásabe pipelines.

It’s a topic the general public doesn’t know much about, but there would be no natural gas pipelines – hence no natural gas – without compressors. Today compression is a main topic of conversation in the industry for many reasons, environment – which includes siting, noise and emissions control – economics, and engineering/construction challenges. As the natural gas industry continues to expand and change direction, more pipelines will be built in the next few years, all dependent on compression.

The oil and gas industry is constantly changing, no more so than over the past several years with new technology, new production hot beds and new developing markets to deliver product to. These changes have set the stage for new opportunities and challenges for the midstream industry, particularly when it comes to the pressure of transporting commodities from the production fields to market. Pressure to do it faster but also safer.

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