Arkansas

Concerns over natural gas development and its potential to cause earthquakes continue to linger in Johnson County, TX, after the area has experienced about 10 modest quakes during the last month.

The expanded use of horizontal drilling and the advent of hydraulic fracturing helped Pennsylvania more than quadruple its natural gas production between 2009 and 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The top geologists in Colorado and Oklahoma, two states with significant shale resources, say researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were hasty in suggesting that injection wells used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling are responsible for an increase in earthquakes in the Midcontinent region.

Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) say there has been a “remarkable” increase in the number of earthquakes in the Midcontinent region, and believe the seismic activity is more than likely attributable to injection wells that handle wastewater from oil and gas drilling.

RegScan, a developer of regulatory compliance products, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) have jointly come up with a system to help oil and natural gas operators comply with the different well stages in the Marcellus Shale basin.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) said Friday a dozen small earthquakes in northeastern Ohio over the last year may have been triggered by a wastewater disposal well in Youngstown, and it unveiled a series of tough new regulations for injection wells.

Colorado School of Mines, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) on Thursday launched a shale natural gas and oil training development initiative, which initially would be funded with separate $1 million grants from ExxonMobil Corp. and GE.

US Infrastructure Holdings LLC (USI) is buying the Wildcat Sabine Gathering System in the Bossier-Haynesville Shale. The newly constructed 28-mile pipeline runs along the Texas-Louisiana border in the northwest corner of Sabine Parish, LA, and gathers and transports gas for producers including Eagle Oil & Gas Co., which has dedicated acreage from its North Toledo Bend Project. The system has takeaway capacity of 200 MMcf/d and includes treating and compression facilities. USI said it will begin construction of a 20-mile extension at the southern end of the Wildcat system to provide producers with direct access to markets served by Gulf South Pipeline Co. LP and Tennessee Gas Pipeline. The expansion will bring Wildcat’s takeaway capacity to 400 MMcf/d and is expected to be complete by mid-2012.

A study by the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University counters recent claims by TransCanada Corp.’s CEO Russ Girling that the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from the Alberta-U.S. international border to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) region could create as many as 20,000 new jobs.