The Texas Gas Association will host the PHMSA/RRC pipeline training seminar in Texas. This year, the seminar, which covers 191/192 and 195 will coincide with the TGA Operations and Management Conference in June. The Conference and the Pipeline Training Seminar will be held at the OMNI hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas. The natural gas training will be on June 16th and 17th and the Hazardous Liquids/Carbon Dioxide will be held on the 17th and 18th.Information will be coming to you and to others in your company, but now would be a great time to put this valuable training on your calendar. The specific agenda is still a work in progress, but as it is firmed up, you will be notified. If you have questions or interest, contact the TGA at (281) 497-8427, or email us at mail@texasgas.com.

SOURCE: The American

How ironic that during the ‘drill, baby, drill’ demonstrations as gasoline prices spiked in 2007 and 2008, a silent revolution with natural gas was already underway that will make those concerns largely irrelevant.

The 20th century was the century of oil. Wars were fought over it, and the outcomes of the century’s biggest conflicts hinged on the stuff. In World War I, for instance, Churchill’s conversion of the British Navy to oil gave the crown’s ships supremacy over German vessels. In World War II, when the Nazis and Japanese each failed to secure supplies of oil, they were doomed. Later, President Ronald Reagan, CIA Director William Casey, and America’s Middle Eastern partners manipulated global oil production to bankrupt the Soviet Union and win the Cold War. In the first half of the century, oil policy served as the catalyst for military victory. In the second half, oil helped propel the greatest economic expansion in the history of the world, and liberated mankind from the tyranny of immobility.

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PHMSA has issued the final rule on Control Room Management. The rule requires control room management procedures to be developed by August 1, 2011 and implemented by February 1, 2012. The final rule can be found here.

December 4, 2009

Today, PHMSA released the final Distribution Integrity Management Rule (DIMP). The rule can be found here. The effective date of the regulation is February 2, 2010. There is a comment period on the rule and comments are invited on the provisions for reporting failures of compression couplings. The comment period ends January 3, 2010. At the end of the comment period, PHMSA will publish a document modifying the provisions of DIMP or a document stating that these provisions will remain unchanged. The Texas Gas Association has compiled an executive summary of the rule which can be found here and will be having regional meetings to introduce and discuss the rule and the requirements of the rule beginning in January of 2010.

On Thursday, October 29, 2009, PHMSA published in the Federal Register an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) on Pipeline Damage Prevention.

The summary of the ANPNR is: “This Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) initiates a rulemaking procedure to establish criteria for determining adequate state enforcement of pipeline damage prevention laws. Under the Pipeline Inspection, Protection, Safety and Enforcement (PIPES) Act of 2006, establishment of these criteria is a prerequisite should PHMSA find it necessary to conduct an enforcement proceeding against an excavator for violation of one-call damage prevention laws in the absence of enforcement action by the state where the events occurred. This notice is issued to solicit feedback and comments regarding the criteria and procedures PHMSA shoule use to determine if a state’s enforcement of its damage prevention laws is adequate. These procedures will encourage states to develop effective excavation damage prevention enforcement programs to protect gas and hazardous liquid pipelines, but also allow federal enforcement authority should any state fail to do so.”

Dates: Persons interested in submitting written comments on this ANPRM must do so y December 14, 2009. PHMSA will consider late filed comments so far as practicable.

Many of the advancements made through racing and hot rodding have been passed down to the passenger car segment. Nothing quite stimulates innovation like pushing a vehicle to its limits. AFVTech, an alternative-fuels conversion company, is building a compressed natural gas (CNG) hot rod based on the classic ‘33 Ford coupe.

Equipped with a hand built LS7 engine (the same motor found in the Z06 but massaged to run on higher-octane CNG), AFVTech expects their Green Rod to make 600 horsepower. Read here.

Source: gas 2.0

Pike Research says that the natural gas vehicle sector “is poised for a new period of growth” over the next five years and the U.S. will be among the top three fastest-growing markets for NGV, along with Canada and India. The increased sales in these three countries will lead to a boom in natural gas vehicle sales with the size of the market growing globally from 9.7 million in 2008 to 17 million vehicles by 2015.

Read the full article here.

Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane. It is found associated with fossil fuels, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, and landfills. It is an important fuel source, a major feedstock for fertilizers, and a potent greenhouse gas.

Natural gas is often informally referred to as simply gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as electricity. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, it must undergo extensive processing to remove almost all materials other than methane. The by-products of that processing include ethane, propane, butanes, pentanes and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, elemental sulfur, and sometimes helium and nitrogen.

Source: here
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Expansion of the U.S. Natural Gas Pipeline Network:
Additions in 2008 and Projects through 2011

This report examines new natural gas pipeline capacity added to the U.S. natural gas pipeline system during 2008. In addition, it discusses and analyzes proposed natural gas pipeline projects that may be developed between 2009 and 2011, and the market factors supporting these initiatives. Get the report here.

In a recent article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires articulated the growing proven supply of world gas reserves. Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO, discussed the proven gas supply of 1.2 trillion oil equivalent barrels.

From the article:

“There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources,” he said.

Rune Bjornson from Norway’s StatoilHydro said exploitable reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations.

“The common wisdom was that unconventional gas was too difficult, too expensive and too demanding,” he said, according to Petroleum Economist. “This has changed. If we ever doubted that gas was the fuel of the future – in many ways there’s the answer.”

The breakthrough has been to combine 3-D seismic imaging with new technologies to free “tight gas” by smashing rocks, known as hydro-fracturing or “fracking” in the trade.

The US is leading the charge. Operations in Pennsylvania and Texas have already been sufficient to cut US imports of liquefied natural gas (LGN) from Trinidad and Qatar to almost nil, with knock-on effects for the global gas market – and crude oil. It is one reason why spot prices for some LNG deliveries have dropped to 50pc of pipeline contracts.

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