According to a story recently published by Inside Climate News, "The Petal Gas Storage facility in Petal was the largest methane emitter among underground gas storage facilities in 2021, but reduced its emissions by 91 percent from 2018 to 2022 by fixing or replacing leaky compressors."
Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP is the parent company for Petal Gas Storage, and according to their most recent sustainability report, replacing and upgrading equipment led to a reduction of methane by 72 percent and a 20 percent reduction of total greenhouse gas emission intensity from 2021 to 2022. The Petal Gas Storage facility is located along U.S. 11 in Petal.
The parent company for Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP is the Loews Corporation, a diversified company doing business in the fields of energy, insurance, packaging and hospitality. Following Loews’ acquisition of Texas Gas Transmission, LLC in 2003 and Gulf South Pipeline Company, LP in 2004, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP was formed in 2005.
In 2011 Boardwalk acquired Petal Gas Storage and Hattiesburg Gas Storage.
"Since then, Boardwalk has established access to key shale-gas supply, developed connections to a wide range of end-use markets, and diversified into natural gas liquids transportation and storage services,” Boardwalk’s website states. "Boardwalk understands that our success depends upon creating value for our customers.
“Our assets connect important supply resources to growing markets for natural gas and natural gas liquids. We have the experience, knowledge, and flexibility to design service offerings and create system enhancements tailored to our customers’ needs."
While Petal Gas Storage managed to eliminate its name from the list of top ten emitters in the United States, other companies still have a long way to go in that respect. The number one polluter in the nation, according to Inside Climate News, is a power plant owned by the Southern Company: Alabama Power’s James H. Miller Jr. Coal Power Plant in Quinton, Alabama.
The story states emissions at that plant measure at 21.8 million MT CO2e.
The Southern Company also owns Mississippi Power, Georgia Power and many other investor-owned utility companies that are operating in the field of energy in the southern region of the United States. Throughout the course of several years, Mississippi Power has made multiple investments in terms of renewable energy, including their power purchase agreement with Silicon Ranch, a solar farm located in Hattiesburg.
The company also invested in the failed Kemper County plant project that ultimately cost ratepayers more than expected, leading to the shutdown of that project altogether.
"Silicon Ranch and Mississippi Power partnered on a large-scale solar generation facility in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,” states the Silicon Ranch website. “To make the renewable energy project possible, the two companies worked closely with officials from the City of Hattiesburg and Forrest County, as well as the Area Development Partnership."
As of recently, BP (British Petroleum), the largest energy investor in the world, proposed another partnership with Mississippi Power to build a solar farm in the southern portion of Lamar County, near Purvis. Despite pushback from landowners in that area, the Minkar Solar Farmproject is slated to go online by 2025 if all goes as planned, according to the most recent update provided to the Pine Belt News by BP's Washington, D.C. correspondent.
The proposed $137 million farm would be located on a 1,700-acre piece of property between Old Highway 11 and Old Okahola School Road near Purvis, which is privately owned by timber company Soterra. The farm would feature approximately 250,000 solar panels and would produce approximately 125 MWdc, which BP officials say is enough energy to power more than 19,000 homes.
“The electricity from solar farms typically flows into the local electric grid, where it mixes with electricity from other sources,” BP spokesperson Josh Hicks told The Pine Belt News. “Sometimes the electricity from a particular source is earmarked for a specific business customer, but the addition of electricity to the system benefits the whole grid and its users.
“In this case, energy would flow into the power grid for Mississippi Power Company and anyone who buys from them. Ratepayers are not investing in Minkar Solar. BP is funding the project, providing the capital expenditures to build and operate it.”
