May 2010 Vol. 237 No. 5

The Dow Chemical Company has appointed Craig Arnold general manager of Dow Oil & Gas. Arnold will assume the role as of June 1 and will relocate to Houston, where Dow Oil & Gas is headquartered.

The Mears Group announced the election of Kevin C. Garrity, P.E. as president of NACE International for 2012. He is vice president of Integrity Services for Mears Group Inc. and works in Plain City, OH. He was nominated by the Eastern Area of NACE and selected by the NACE Nominating Committee at Corrosion 2010 in San Antonio, TX.

Grady McBurnett joined Indianhead Pipeline Services as vice president of marketing and business development. His responsibilities will include the marketing and development of buoyancy control, foam breakers, sandbags, ROW restoration and portable, mat-cleaning system. He can be reached at grady.mcburnett@indianheadpipeline.com. Wood Group’s Alliance Engineering hired Greg Vetter as manager of offshore business development.

Bonacker Interactive announced the appointment of Philip B. Drake to creative director May 25. Drake brings over 20 years experience to the position, including extensive experience in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries.

Is it possible that natural gas – that cleanest-burning of all fossil fuels – might actually come between Mr. and Mrs. Share? Let me take you back a few weeks to a rather provocative discussion that Janet and I had one evening.

U.S. regulators approved a plan by TransCanada Corp. to solicit interest from oil and gas producers in the multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline the company and its engineering partner, ExxonMobil, want to build from Alaska to Canada and ultimately into the continental United States.

The major drivers of midstream infrastructure buildout are learning to read the Marcellus. Just what makes it different aside from its scale? Recognizing the indigenous challenges that are unique to this play and developing the solutions to overcome them are going to be paramount.

The recently completed Line 108 Replacement Project, an 11 mile long natural gas pipeline for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in northern California, featured the use of horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for portions of the pipeline installation beneath two rivers and two extremely sensitive natural areas.

Some of the world’s largest oil companies are reinforcing analyst claims that Canada’s Horn River and Montney shale and tight gas formations have the potential to revolutionize that country’s gas future. A glut may be in the offing, but investors appear confident that gas will push aside coal in the U.S. power sector. Plans are even afoot that would see Canada join the ranks of the world’s LNG exporters.

While most operators understand the importance of acquiring data to efficiently manage the integrity of their pipeline systems, many are unaware of laboratory testing procedures that are available to help guide risk and integrity management. This article will look at lab testing capabilities related to corrosion and integrity that can benefit the pipeline and gas distribution industry.

Although many consider MIG gun consumables to be a commodity — a simple ‘throw-away’ item — these components play a critical role in achieving good welding performance and quality. They can also affect the overall productivity and cost of your welding operation, often in some rather subtle ways.

In today’s business environment outsourcing has become relatively commonplace. It is a model utilized to lower costs, improve performance, and to create efficiencies. It touches most industries, and the utility sector is certainly no exception.

Murry S. Gerber has a vision for the natural gas industry and this country, one that includes the pipeline sector. In fact, if Gerber’s vision became reality, we would have the pipeline project to end all pipeline projects. Gerber is executive chairman of EQT Corporation, a 120-year-old Pittsburgh-based company that traces its history back to the drilling of the first natural gas well by George Westinghouse in 1888.

Placing a value on a pipeline is a specialized process. The combination of methods used to determine the value or a pipeline or gathering system is unlike any other type of appraisal. Furthermore, no two pipelines are precisely the same. The unique methods described here are based on several years of observing the way a pipeline owner looks at a pipeline and the right-of-way in which it rests.

Modern line pipe design is a complex business; the various demands of corrosion management, fatigue resistance, deepwater collapse and any other failure modes can place a lot on the robustness of that design. The final details of the design make certain assumptions about the steel pipe that is going to be used to make the pipeline.

Score another victory for technology! U.S. natural gas supplies have the potential of increasing by 20-40% because of advances in two major oil and gas field technologies. Increased abilities to do horizontal drilling and better ways to open shale gas formations - “fracing” – is resulting in new supplies of this major U.S. fuel.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) softened some of the prospective greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring requirements for the natural gas transmission companies but the supplemental rule the agency published March 22 left the industry miffed nonetheless.

El Paso Corporation has received Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for its Ruby Pipeline project. Ruby is a 675-mile, 42-inch interstate natural gas pipeline that will access significant Rockies supplies and make them available to consuming markets in California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest.

Enbridge Inc. intends to develop a NGL pipeline from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to markets in the midwestern United States.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. has executed definitive agreements to purchase two natural gas gathering and treating systems from subsidiaries of M2 Midstream LLC in a negotiated transaction for $1.2 billion.

Excelerate Energy L.P. has sold four cargoes of LNG that will be delivered into Argentina’s LNG importation facility located in the port city of Bahía Blanca, 400 miles south of Buenos Aires.

A draft environmental impact statement (EIS) issued by the FERC for Kern River Gas Transmission Co.’s Apex Pipeline expansion indicates that some adverse environmental impacts exist.

The Tampa Palms Community Development District has reportedly accepted an offer of $400,000 from Florida Gas Transmission Co. (FGT) for land in Area 1 where FGT plans to run a gas pipeline.

March 30 marked the startup of gas flowing through Sinopec subsidiary China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation’s 1,702 km Puguang–Shanghai natural gas pipeline project.

Telvent reports that Società Gasdotti Italia S.P.A. (SGI), the largest private natural gas transporter in Italy, has completed implementation of Telvent’s gas-reporting application.

Construction on the long-awaited Nord Stream pipeline is under way. Dr. Rainer Seele, chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of Wintershall, announced the construction start of one of Europe’s biggest-ever energy projects to bring natural gas directly from Russia to Germany and Western Europe on April 9.

Ryckman Creek Resources, LLC has received approval to use FERC's pre-filing review process for its Ryckman Creek Gas Storage Project, a new interstate natural gas storage development in Uinta County, Wyoming, near the highly liquid Opal Hub.

Australia’s Queensland Gas Company has awarded Baosteel subsidiary Howa Trading Co. a contract for the manufacture of 550 km of pipeline for its Queensland Curtis LNG Project.

Natural gas is scheduled to begin flowing through new pipelines from the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast to southern India in 2012, according to news reports.

The feasibility study for the Tauern Gas Pipeline (TGL) to transport gas a distance of 290 km from Haiming in Bavaria through Austria to the area of Malborghetto/Tarvis in Italy is nearing completion.

Managing a gas pipeline is an around-the-clock, complex operation that involves continuous monitoring. Hence we need a highly reliable, simple and dependable way to get voice, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) telemetry traffic and, in some instances, video traffic from the gas pipeline block valve stations to the main control room.

Dresser has expanded its relationship with Tancy Instrument Group Co., Ltd, of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China for distribution of Dresser’s metering and regulator products in China.

I was the first petroleum engineer of Pakistan or an oil technologist, as I was called at that time, with an honors degree from the University of London, U.K. I learned my trade by doing it. When Dhulian well 42 blew out during Johnston testing, every rig hand ran off the rig’s floor. But I had designed the ‘test Christmas tree,’ and I didn’t run.

PII Pipeline Solutions, a GE Oil & Gas and Al Shaheen joint venture, marked the official opening of a new state-of-the-art services facility in Calgary on May 20. The facility is aimed to support North America’s oil and gas infrastructure with advanced pipeline inspection technology and services, and will specialize in pipeline crack analysis, serving Canadian, U.S. and European pipeline operators.

The Rice University-led international journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C) announced May 27 that it has released a special free virtual edition that makes available 25 previously released full studies on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It also provides access to abstracts of more than 70 oil-related science studies published over the publication’s 29-year history.

SubSurface Instruments, TT Technologies, HammerHead Mole, Footage Tools, Ditch Witch, Sharewell, INROCK, American Augers, Railhead Underground Products, McLaughlin, Radius Pro HDD Tools, Radiodetection, Heath Consultants, Underground Tools, Inc.