-Williams Partners said its Geismar, La., plant would begin producing ethylene for sale this month. Via the Tulsa World, Williams is operating the plant and has it in the final stages of commissioning. Company officials acknowledged that some commissioning activities have taken longer than expected. Williams initially hoped to resume production at the expanded facility in June.
-Spanish oil company Repsol is seeking investment partners to help build an LNG export terminal on the east coast of Canada. Via Reuters, the plant would export 5 million metric tons per day of U.S. LNG to Europe. It would be located at Repsol’s Canaport terminal in New Brunswick.
-Competitive Power Ventures Holdings is moving forward with a 900-megawatt natural gas power plant northeast of Houston. Via the Houston Business Journal, the first phase of development for the Pondera King Energy Center will include a combined cycle plant on 88 acres. Plans for the facility will go before Houston’s planning commission Thursday. A timeline for completion has not yet been determined.
-Thirty-two percent of natural gas pipeline capacity in the Northeast could be bidirectional by 2017, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Increased natural gas production has spurred the pipeline industry to modify its systems to allow as much as 8.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas out of the region. Other expansions and new systems are planned to move Northeast-produced gas to markets outside the region.
-The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) added the modernization of process safety management (PSM) regulations to its “Most Wanted Safety Improvement” list. CSB has long argued in favor of modernizing PSM standards, but little has changed with regard to federal regulations since the 1990s. The board said PSM has been found in its recent refinery accident investigations to function as a reactive, activity-based framework instead of a performance-based regulation.
