Appears

Riding the Bakken shale rush, North Dakota appears in a good position to jump up to the second biggest oil producing state in the nation behind only Texas. If the upper Midwest state achieves that status next year as expected, it would leapfrog over both Alaska and California, something that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. appears to be joining a growing list of companies interested in the Utica Shale of Ohio.

Because the House and Senate pipeline safety reauthorization bills are nearly identical on critical issues and there appears to be strong bipartisan support for them, the legislation has a good chance of clearing Congress this year, officials with a major pipeline group said last Monday.

Because the House and Senate pipeline safety reauthorization bills are nearly identical on critical issues and there appears to be strong bipartisan support for them, the legislation has a good chance of clearing Congress this year, officials with a major pipeline group said Monday.

New York appears more likely to lift the de facto natural gas drilling moratorium in parts of the state’s Marcellus Shale, but for a variety of reasons — not the least of which is hesitation by operators to commit capital — determining how much of an impact the prospective acreage may have on U.S. gas markets leads to more questions than answers, according to research by Goldman Sachs & Co.

New York appears more likely to lift the de facto natural gas drilling moratorium in parts of the state’s Marcellus Shale, but for a variety of reasons — not the least of which is hesitation by operators to commit capital — determining how much of an impact the prospective acreage may have on U.S. gas markets leads to more questions than answers, according to research by Goldman Sachs & Co.

The capital costs for building a typical natural gas-fired electric generation plant are going up, and it appears to be a trend in that upward direction for the first time in nearly a decade, according to the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) capital cost index for North America released on Wednesday.

The U.S. House, in a rare show of bipartisanship Thursday, passed the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (HR 1230), but there appears to be no rush in the Senate to develop a companion bill, where passage in any case may be in doubt.

June natural gas futures eased, although a major contingent — funds and managed accounts — now appears to be aligned on the long side of the market and technical support remains intact. At the close June futures had fallen 2.3 cents to $4.670 and July was lower by 2.5 cents to $4.738. June crude oil cascaded lower giving up $2.47 to $111.05/bbl.