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A two-phase approach to the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries should result in a new line from Oklahoma to the Gulf being in place sometime next year, with the XL phase from Canada to Nebraska following by early 2015, the CEO of the project’s sponsor, TransCanada Corp., said Friday. The latter is the only part of the project now requiring a federal Presidential Permit from the U.S. State Department.

Seventeen separate water withdrawals already approved in Pennsylvania by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) — mostly for natural gas operators — have been temporarily suspended because localized stream flow levels have fallen throughout the basin because of drought conditions, officials said.

Seventeen separate water withdrawals already approved in Pennsylvania by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) — mostly for natural gas operators — have been temporarily suspended because of localized stream flow levels that have fallen throughout the basin on drought conditions, officials said.

Climate change impacts are lessened when power plants burn natural gas instead of coal, but the same is not necessarily true when vehicles burn natural gas instead of traditional fuels because methane leakage more than offsets the clean-burning benefits of gas, according to a methane leakage model developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and university researchers. However, the gas industry countered that the model relies on “outdated and incomplete” data.

An affiliate of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. on Tuesday took on Linn Energy LLC as a partner in an enhanced oil recovery project on the 22,000-acre Salt Creek Field of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

Although already under environmental appeal, Utah state officials issued a permit the last week in March to a Delaware-based company to a begin a large oil shale extraction project that eventually could cover up to 1,500 acres in the Uintah Basin. It could end up being one of the largest oil shale mining operations in the state.

It’s early days in Chevron Corp.’s shale natural gas and oil program, but it is “an area of significant long-term growth” with opportunities in the United States, Canada, Argentina, China and Europe — in liquids and dry gas — an executive said during the company’s analyst day Tuesday.

Already subjected to pointed criticism from regulators and lawmakers, a $2.2 billion, four-year plan for enhancing Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) natural gas pipeline system is not likely to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) anytime soon, PG&E utility President Chris Johns told financial analysts Thursday on an earnings conference call.

Denver-based Venoco Inc., an independent exploration and production (E&P) company in California’s oil-dominated Monterey Shale, said Monday CEO Tim Marquez intends to buy back all the publicly held shares of the company he founded, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.