Around

The plot has thickened around the mystery of natural gas bubbles that have been seen in two bayous in Assumption Parish, LA. Geologists and other experts are monitoring an area of swampland that has liquefied into muck. Segments of pipelines passing by the affected area have been depressurized and shut in.

The Mississippian Lime formation, which stretches across northern Oklahoma, western Kansas and southern Nebraska, is drawing increased industry interest, thanks to cheaper drilling costs and shallower wells compared to North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, according to the “IHS Herold Mississippian Oil Play Regional Play Assessment.”

Demand for heat exchangers to be used in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects around the world has prompted Air Products to construct a second heat exchanger manufacturing facility at a new location in Manatee County, FL, the company said.

Natural gas prices will remain weak at around two bucks through this year, with sub-$2 prices for some period during the summer, and natural gas liquids (NGL) prices won’t be giving bulls anything to smile about either, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) analyst Michael Grande said during a teleconference Thursday.

Poking around in the Anadarko Basin in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma above its Granite Wash holdings, Chesapeake Energy Corp. said Friday it made “a significant new discovery” of oil in the Hogshooter play.

Gas pipeline safety laws continue to swirl around in the current session of the California state legislature, with several bills still active, although at least a couple of proposals were declared dead in committee earlier in May. A new bill (AB 478) in the lower house Assembly was introduced Tuesday to redirect fines paid by natural gas utilities to help pay for pipeline upgrades mandated in the wake of the San Bruno, CA, pipeline rupture and explosion nearly two years ago.

Two earthquakes that recently shook the area around the East Texas town of Timpson were unlikely to have been caused by natural gas drilling or drilling waste disposal activities, according to the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC).

If the U.S. does export liquefied natural gas, the impacts will be modest all around and the market will balance itself, a year-long study by the Brookings Institution found.

Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. eschewed all talk on Wednesday that its North American onshore properties are anything but stellar by announcing a $1 billion increase to the 2012 capital spending budget, with nearly all of the money to be focused on exploration efforts in the company’s in-house unconventional portfolio.