Uduak-Joe Ntuk
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has appointed Uduak-Joe Ntuk as the city’s first-ever oil administrator to regulate the safety of oil operations in the city.
He will begin serving in the $133,500-per-year post in October, heading a new Office of Petroleum and Natural Gas Administration and Safety within the City’s Board of Public Works.
Ntuk, 37, is a petroleum engineering official for the city of Long Beach, and formerly was an engineer with Chevron Corp.
Natural gas supplies this winter should be adequate for the needs of Southern California 
residents and businesses, despite earlier fears about shortages resulting from the shutdown of operations at the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon storage facility.
That’s the conclusion of a 41-page report prepared jointly by the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, the California Independent System Operator, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Southern California Gas Co.
A federal jury found Pacific Gas & Electric Co. guilty of violations of pipeline safety regulations 
that led to the 2010 explosion of a natural gas pipeline in San Bruno which caused eight deaths and destroyed 38 homes.
California’s largest utility faces potential fines of $3 million. While the jury was deliberating, prosecutors decided not to pursue potential fines of up to $562 million. PG&E was previously fined a record $1.6 billion by the state’s Public Utilities Commission.
San Ramon-based Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) reported a loss of $1.5 billion, or 78 cents per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2016, compared with earnings of $571 million, or 30 cents per share, for the same period in 2015.
The company also declared a quarterly dividend of $1.07 per share, payable Sept. 12, to holders of record as of Aug. 19.
Preliminary draft permanent regulations for natural gas storage facilities in California have been released 
by the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR).
When finalized, the regulations will replace emergency regulations the agency issued earlier this year. The draft includes new safety and testing measures that would be required for the 12 gas storage fields in the state.
State regulators turned down a proposal to construct a natural gas pipeline that would have fed the 
Southern California Gas Co. distribution system.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said that, in the wake of the prolonged shutdown of the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon storage facility, there is not enough spare natural gas in Northern California to make the pipeline worthwhile.
