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EPA and Texas Railroad Commission Sign Memorandum of Agreement for Permitting Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide

LCG, April 29, 2025--Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) today outlining the state’s plans to administer programs related to carbon storage wells, known as Class VI wells. The MOA signing is a required step in the RRC’s application to be granted authority to permit Class VI wells in the state of Texas. EPA is currently preparing a proposed approval of RRC’s primacy application.

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Calpine and ExxonMobil Sign CO2 Transportation and Storage Agreement for CCS Project in Texas

LCG, April 24, 2025--Exxon Mobil Corporation (ExxonMobil) announced yesterday an agreement with Calpine Corporation (Calpine) to transport and permanently store up to 2 million metric tons per annum (MTA) of CO2 from Calpine’s Baytown Energy Center, a natural gas-fired facility located near Houston, Texas. This is part of Calpine’s Baytown Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project that is designed to add CCS for the facility’s CO2 emissions. The Calpine facility could then provide a 24/7 supply of low-carbon electricity to the Texas grid plus steam to nearby industrial facilities.

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Industry News

FERC Judge: No Gas Price Manipulation by El Paso,But Standards of Conduct were 'Clearly . Violated'

LCG, Oct. 10, 2001--The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's top judge ruled yesterday that El Paso Corp. did not manipulate gas prices on its pipelines into California last year, but found the company guilty of affiliate abuse.

At issue was whether El Paso Corp. had conspired with its affiliates, El Paso Merchant and Mojave Pipeline, to drive up natural gas prices in California. The California Public Utility Commission, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and Southern California Edison Co., claimed El Paso withheld capacity on its pipelines into the state from March through November of last year.

They claimed that the action inflated prices, costing the state $3.7 billion more than would have otherwise been paid for gas.

Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner did not find evidence of such manipulation. "While El Paso Pipeline and El Paso Merchant had the ability to exercise market power, there was not a clear showing that they had in fact done so," he said.

But Wagner said transcripts of telephone conversations in February of last year showed clear violation of FERC standards of conduct, which say a pipeline operator must share natural gas transmission information with all shippers and not just its own marketing affiliates.

The standards also require that a pipeline company and its marketing affiliate must maintain "arm's length" separation.

"These telephone transcripts demonstrate blatant collusion on the part of El Paso Merchant and Mojave-El Paso Pipeline to keep secret a discount for service on the downstream Mojave system until the open season ended, giving El Paso Merchant an advantage in making its bid for the total 1,220 million cubic feet per day," Wagner wrote.

The judge said the violation was somewhat mitigated by changing conditions.

"While there are clear violations of the current standards of conduct in this case, those rules were promulgated many years ago and the gas industry has undergone tremendous changes since then with merger after merger creating large holding companies, such as the El Paso Corp., and very different methods of doing business than in bygone years," he wrote.

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