Administration

In the annual State of the Union address to the nation Tuesday, President Obama praised domestic natural gas production and said if it’s “extracted safely,” gas would be “the ‘bridge fuel’ that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.”

At a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) expressed support for approving a transboundary agreement between the United States and Mexico that would govern the development of oil and natural gas resources along the two countries’ maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

The four co-chairs of the House of Representatives’ Natural Gas Caucus Wednesday had one message for the Obama administration: stay out of state regulators’ oil and natural gas activities.

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) best practices need to be improved, but the drilling practice can be done safely, according to Stanford University’s Steven Chu, who served as Energy Secretary during the first Obama administration.

President Obama’s tilt toward accepting the economic opportunities from U.S. natural gas abundance may have been in fits and starts, but the right-leaning oil and gas industry is finding a lot to praise today, industry officials said Wednesday.

U.S. oil and natural gas exploration and production companies added 31.2 Tcf of wet natural gas proved reserves and almost 3.8 billion bbl of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves in 2011, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report issued Thursday.

The capacity of underground natural gas storage facilities increased by about 2% from November 2011 to November 2012, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a new report. The increase was seen in both demonstrated maximum and design capacities.

In its latest Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the Energy Information Administration (EIA) nudged down is Henry Hub natural gas price forecast for this year and next and predicted that coal-fired power plants will retain their recent gains over gas-fueled facilities.

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said Thursday it plans to develop a proposed rule requiring companies who make chemical substances and mixtures used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to report data on the chemicals.