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Cash prices overall averaged about 9 cents lower Monday as trading rosters were thinned by the holiday and near-term weather was close to seasonal conditions. Eastern points fell along with Gulf quotes, but California locations were mostly steady to higher.

In the current commodity price environment, the best thing about a natural gas rig might be that it can stop drilling for gas, move somewhere else and start drilling for oil. Put another way in a recent note by analysts at Goldman Sachs: “Where a rig is drilling is a more reliable indicator than its classification as a natural gas or oil rig in predicting if the well drilled will be a natural gas well or an oil well.”

The industry-led Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has canceled a study underway by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) about natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), following criticism that previous research had a pro-drilling slant.

In the current commodity price environment, the best thing about a natural gas rig might be that it can stop drilling for gas, move somewhere else and start drilling for oil.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly has passed a bill that authorizes the state Department of General Services (DGS) to lease state-owned land for oil and natural gas drilling, as well as mining for coal, limestone and collecting coalbed methane.

Mixed with solid reviews about all-time record highs for monthly natural gas and oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and Williston Basin region, the director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) sounded words of caution last week that the drilling boom is showing some signs of easing.

Mixed with the solid reviews about all-time record highs for monthly natural gas and oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and Williston Basin region, the director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) sounded words of caution that the drilling boom is showing signs of easing, but not because production has slowed much.

Transocean Ltd., which owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, has offered to pay about $1.5 billion to settle U.S. claims for the April 2010 deepwater disaster, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Monday.

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity has issued a 60-day notice of intent to file a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for allegedly failing to keep wildlife protected from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas wells on federal lands it manages in the Monterey Shale in central California.