Affected

It looks like Wyoming and other states affected by the U.S. Interior Department’s withholding of mineral revenues due to the states as part of the federal sequestration budget cuts will not be able to take legal action, so they need to seek help in Congress, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said Friday.

A group of environmental organizations has written to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 6 administrator alleging that politics and not science caused the agency to drop a water contamination case against Range Resources Corp. and calling for a resumption of legal action.

Shell Chemical LP is offering to pay western Pennsylvania localities millions for lost tax revenue affected by its proposed “world-scale” ethane cracker. The Beaver County Commissioners said the Royal Dutch Shell plc subsidiary had made an initial proposal to pay localities 110% of the annual property tax revenue currently being paid by Horsehead Holding Corp., which owns the proposed cracker site. State law caps payments-in-lieu-of-taxes at 110%. County tax records show Horsehead, a zinc producer, was assessed around $6.2 million for the 2013 tax year. At 110%, Shell’s offer could amount to an annual payment of about $6.82 million over 22 years, but the county said negotiations are needed. Local stakeholders are preparing to file an application to the state Department of Community and Economic Development for a Keystone Opportunity Expansion Zone for the ethane cracker site. Such a designation would, if approved, give Shell up to 22 years of tax exceptions and abatements.

A subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc has offered to pay localities millions for lost tax revenue affected by its proposed “world-scale” ethane cracker.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of Act 13, the state’s new omnibus Marcellus Shale law, on Oct. 17 in Pittsburgh.

A district court judge in Texas has reversed his earlier ruling that oil and natural gas equipment used “below ground” should be exempt from state sales taxes on extraction equipment.

The Northeast, Great Lakes and Southwest areas of the United States will remain mostly warmer than normal over the next three months, continuing a trend that kept a lid on natural gas consumption and prices through most of the winter, according to forecasters at Andover, MA-based Weather Services International (WSI). But conditions may be ripe for a cooler-than-normal summer overall this year, WSI said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Friday that 20 water wells in Dimock Township, PA — collectively its second round of water quality testing — did not reveal any signs of contamination from natural gas drilling.

Nearly half of the U.S. oil and natural gas merger and acquisition (M&A) activity during the third quarter was driven by shale plays, according to the latest survey by consultancy PwC US.