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Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead is considering a pre-drilling water testing requirement for oil and natural gas operators in the state.

It won’t happen this year, but starting in 2014 there should be a sharp increase in oil production in California, according to Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) CEO Steve Chazen, speaking last Thursday on a year-end quarterly earnings conference call.

Infrastructure projects, acquisitions and contracting activity — particularly in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas — served to lift crude oil pipeline throughputs for NuStar GP Holdings LLC last year. Some of NuStar’s South Texas pipeline assets had been underutilized.

The coming spring could rank among the top-ten warmest on record, but that warmth isn’t expected to be as widespread or as extreme as last year, according to AccuWeather.com’s long-range forecast team.

Even with the big withdrawal by operators in U.S. onshore natural gas plays, domestic output will continue to grow “for the foreseeable future,” according to Raymond James & Associates Inc. energy team.

Claims by natural gas bears of a “new normal” in U.S. markets because of the unconventional resource revolution aren’t supported by the underlying data, according to Morningstar analysts Mark P. Hanson and Jason Stevens.

Shale gas production is on track to grow by 7% a year and reach 54 Bcf/d by 2030, with most of the increase from North America, according to BP plc. The United States this year also may surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia in liquids production.

Pennsylvania’s new auditor general, Eugene DePasquale, will conduct a performance audit of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) water testing and waste disposal programs to assess their effectiveness in regulating shale gas development.

Gasco Energy Inc. will submit a plan of compliance next month to NYSE MKT to address how it intends to right its financial ship and avoid being delisted by the exchange, the Denver-based company said Wednesday.