OREANDA-NEWS. April 12, 2017. The California senate has moved forward a bill to temporarily delay full reopening of utility SoCal Gas' natural gas storage facility at Aliso Canyon.

The Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee voted in favor of SB 57 to stop the reopening of SoCal Gas' Aliso Canyon storage field near Los Angeles until state regulators have completed an investigation to determine the root cause of a massive methane leak discovered in October 2015 that released an estimated 4.6 Bcf (130mn m?) of natural gas into the atmosphere.

State senator Henry Stern introduced SB 57 to require the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) to complete the root cause analysis and determine the cause of the leak before lifting the moratorium on natural gas injections at the site.

The bill has support from many other state leaders, including US senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), state senators Scott Wilk (R-Antelope Valley), Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), and assemblyman Dante Acosta (R-Santa Clarita), the Los Angeles city council and the Los Angeles county board of supervisors.