Agency

As he has done with hydraulic fracturing and other environmental regulatory issues, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead Tuesday urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to defer to his state in regulating regional haze, which ties directly to the state’s oil, natural gas and power generation industries. Mead wrote to EPA’s air quality program director to head off the mandate of a federal implementation plan (FIP).

As part of the Obama administration’s “all-of-the-above energy strategy,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week said the agency will offer more than 20 million acres offshore Texas for oil and natural gas exploration and development in a year-end lease sale that will include all of the available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Planning Area.

As part of the Obama administration’s “all-of-the-above energy strategy,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday that the agency will offer more than 20 million acres offshore Texas for oil and natural gas exploration and development in a year-end lease sale that will include all of the available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Planning Area.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is operating under a “misperception of initial production from gas wells,” which “has led to a drastic overestimate of methane emissions from hydraulically fractured [fracked] natural gas wells,” according to Darren Smith, environmental manager for Devon Energy Corp.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is operating under a “misperception of initial production from gas wells,” which “has led to a drastic overestimate of methane emissions from hydraulically fractured [fracked] natural gas wells,” according to Darren Smith, environmental manager for Devon Energy Corp.

FERC’s Office of Enforcement has preliminarily determined that Kansas City, MO-based natural gas distributor Missouri Gas Energy (MGE) violated the agency’s capacity release regulations. The alleged violations involved a total of almost 69 Bcf of capacity.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said in a regulatory filing Friday that it may have to delay some of the planned oil and natural gas asset sales this year, which could up be to $14 billion, because low natural gas prices may stretch its ability to comply with credit covenants.

A former director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the last President Bush called the agency’s efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and natural gas production on public lands “senseless.”

In its final rule to eliminate harmful air pollution from oil and natural gas production, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted the energy industry a “reasonable” time to meet its requirements, extending the deadline for full compliance from two months to two-and-a-half years. The extension was in keeping with the Obama administration’s recent embrace of unconventional resources, particularly shale gas.