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The Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives passed HB 133 by a 54-41 vote on Wednesday. The measure opens land owned by the state — including state parks — to oil and gas leasing and creates a five-member Oil and Gas Leasing Commission.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has approved the continuation through next year of an Elizabethtown Gas utility infrastructure upgrade program, which has already replaced nearly 47 miles of cast iron pipe and constructed two major interconnect projects totaling about 24 miles of new pipeline in Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon counties.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu said Monday the Obama administration was looking for the “best practices” to move forward with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of shale gas.

While natural gas demand already is poised to take a hit, ever-growing regional wind power supplies may be the next domino to fall in the face of excess hydroelectric supplies in the Pacific Northwest. The region’s key power marketer/transporter, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), however, is going to delay as long as it can a proposal to begin curtailing large chunks of wind power, officials said last Wednesday.

While natural gas demand already is poised to take a hit, ever-growing regional wind power supplies may be the next domino to fall in the face of excess hydroelectric supplies in the Pacific Northwest. The region’s key power marketer/transporter, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), however, is going to delay as long as it can a proposal to begin curtailing large chunks of wind power, officials said Wednesday.

Although already pushed by a past governor’s executive order and implemented by state agencies, California’s ambitious 33%-by-2020 renewable energy goal was passed by the legislature and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday, as the latest attempt to codify the goal in state law. Backers of the measure (SB 2X) said Brown is expected to sign it into law.

If natural gas and nuclear power are included as part of the clean energy sector, the United States could already be more than half of the way toward meeting a national clean energy standard (CEC) as outlined by President Obama in his State of the Union address earlier this year, according to a white paper on the CES concept released Monday by the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

A bill that would have changed West Virginia’s regulation of Marcellus Shale drilling was not brought up for a final vote by the House of Delegates during the final day of its 2011 regular session Friday and so will not become law this year.

While repercussions such as the bankruptcy filing of Seahawk Drilling Inc. are already being felt from the months-long de facto moratorium on Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas drilling, the shockwaves from the U.S. government action are likely to reverberate for many years to come, even after the permitting flowrate gets back up to speed, according to a panel of drilling and well service veterans speaking at CERAWeek 2011 in Houston.