-Pennsylvania regulators are pursuing a $4.5 million fine against gas driller EQT Corp. for environmental impacts from a leaky impoundment. Via the Associated Press, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found more than 200 holes in a waste pit containing fracking wastewater. The department said the wastewater leached into streams, springs and groundwater and killed trees and other vegetation. EQT’s general counsel called the DEP’s timing “suspect,” given that the firm recently took the department to court over the its interpretation of the state’s Clean Streams Law.
-Targa Resources plans to buy new cryogenic natural gas processing plants to be installed in Texas and North Dakota. Targa will buy and install a 300-cubic-feet-per-day plant in Winkler County, Texas, to serve customers in the Delaware Basin. Targa will also buy a 200-million-cubic-feet-per-day plant to be located in McKenzie County, N.D., in the Williston Basin. The new plants will supplement existing gas processing capacity Targa owns in the Permian Basin and the Bakken and Three Forks shales.
-NGL Energy Partners secured the commitments necessary to start building the Grand Mesa pipeline. The 550-mile, 130,000-barrel-per-day crude pipeline will deliver oil from the DJ and Wattenberg fields in Colorado to Cushing, Okla. It is a joint venture between NGL Energy and Rimrock Midstream.
-Occidental Petroleum is seeking to unload some $3 billion in oil assets in North Dakota. Via Bloomberg, Oxy has hired an investment bank to help it sell 335,000 net drilling acres — most of them undeveloped — in the Williston basin. Oxy has been less successful in the Bakken region than other areas due to higher costs. The company has recently undergone a restructuring effort that includes the impending spin-off of its California operations and a possible sale of assets in the Middle East and North Africa.
-ConocoPhillips discovered oil in its FAN-1 well 60 miles off the coast of Senegal. The well is located in the Sangomar Deep block in approximately 4,700 feet of water. ConocoPhillips holds a 35% working interest in the well.
