Equitrans' Pennsylvania gas leak under investigation by U.S. agency

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Federal regulators have launched an investigation of the recent natural gas leak that from an Equitrans Midstream (NYSE:ETRN) gas storage facility in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said Friday.

The leak at the company's Rager Mountain Storage facility lasted 11 days and spewed more than 1B cf of natural gas into the atmosphere.

The PHMSA, which has authority to issue fines or corrective orders that could delay a restart of the facility, said it will attempt to determine what went wrong and whether to take any enforcement action.

Equitrans (ETRN) has estimated the size of the leak at 100M cf/day of gas, which a Bloomberg analysis said equates to a total range of 15,800 to 20,300 metric tons of methane - making it one of the most significant releases of methane in the U.S. in several years.

Equitrans Midstream's (ETRN) Mountain Valley Pipeline project has been weighed by legal setbacks this year, but "everything is moving in favorably for [its] dividends," Daniel Thurecht writes in an analysis posted on Seeking Alpha.