2010

A nonprofit organization that conducts reviews of state oil and natural gas regulations has concluded that North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has experienced staff but is not adequately prepared to regulate oil and natural gas activities.

A consortium of private equity investors is readying a $7.15 billion leveraged buyout of El Paso Corp.’s exploration and production (E&P) business, which includes an array of liquids-rich U.S. unconventional property that extends across Texas, Louisiana, the Raton Basin and the Rocky Mountains.

Mitsui Offshore Exploration of Japan, which held a 10% stake in the Macondo well that blew out in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, has paid $90 million to U.S. officials in penalties and environmental restoration fees, making it the first company of those involved in the massive oil spill to settle.

Triad Hunter LLC, a subsidiary of Magnum Hunter Resources Corp., has closed on a $24.8 million acquisition of approximately 15,558 gross (12,186 net) acres in southeastern Ohio’s Utica Shale from an undisclosed seller, the company said Friday.

Susan Ackerman was reappointed to a four-year term on the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC). Ackerman was originally appointed in March 2010 to fill the remainder of the term of Chairman Lee Beyer, who resigned to run for his old seat in the state legislature where he now serves in the Senate. She was then appointed to a full term. Prior to her first appointment panel, Ackerman was an energy attorney in private practice. Her new term expires March 13, 2016.

New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens said the agency plans to maintain current staff levels during the upcoming fiscal year because the budget doesn’t include funds to monitor new unconventional wells.

As it goes with producers, so it goes with the midstream: liquids-rich gas is the most desirable to have and to handle, and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP’s Boardwalk Field Services LLC is expanding its systems accordingly.

Demand for drilling equipment in North America’s onshore continues to be strong, with the backlog of capital equipment orders in rig technology in the final three months of 2011 double year-ago levels, National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV) reported Thursday.

NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage (NGT&S) is in the latter stages of developing a 90-mile pipeline in western Pennsylvania to support increased Marcellus Shale natural gas production, NiSource Inc. officials said Wednesday.