Jamison Cocklin

Efforts that began last year to lease state-owned land on the Ohio River and elsewhere in West Virginia have practically stalled with the sharp decline in oil and natural gas prices, compounding the downturn’s impact on state revenues as severance tax collections have fallen this year, too.

American Electric Power Co. Inc. subsidiary AEP Ohio has reached a power purchase agreement with state regulators and other stakeholders that would help keep its uncompetitive plants running, convert others to natural gas and more than double renewable energy capacity.

A day before its parent company, Magnum Hunter Resources Corp., entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Eureka Hunter Pipeline LLC again announced record throughput on its Appalachian gathering system.

Ohio’s Class II underground injection wells continued to accept more oil and natural gas drilling wastes through the first nine months of this year, nearing a state record set in 2014, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) data.

After a year of steep losses, dwindling cash flow and growing debt, Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. said Tuesday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a final effort to restructure the company and clean up its balance sheet.

After years of protracted lawsuits, the Ohio Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case that could release hundreds of landowners from undeveloped oil and natural gas lease agreements and cast doubt on similarly worded leases that have been used for decades in the state.

A budget-related bill passed by the Pennsylvania Senate last week would force the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to start over on a series of new regulations for the conventional oil and gas industry, and could jeopardize the agency’s more than four-year effort to implement new rules for shale drillers.

West Virginia’s severance tax collections continued to plummet in November, driven primarily by low oil and natural gas prices, which have also hurt personal income tax collections and helped to widen a projected budget deficit for fiscal year 2016.

A Pennsylvania-based energy transportation and logistics firm is expanding in West Virginia to meet shale field demand for pipeline inspections with a facility that’s expected to open in January at a shuttered steel plant in Benwood, WV, about three miles south of Wheeling in Marshall County.