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Range Resources Corp. will fund its $1.3 billion 2013 capital expenditures (capex) budget from operating cash flow, available liquidity under its bank credit facility and proceeds from asset sales, including a planned sale of Permian Basin properties in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas, the Fort Worth, TX-based company said last week.

Range Resources Corp. will fund its $1.3 billion 2013 capital expenditures (capex) budget from operating cash flow, available liquidity under its bank credit facility and proceeds from asset sales, including the planned sale of some Permian Basin properties in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas, the Fort Worth, TX-based company said Wednesday.

Cash prices overall averaged a 20-cent drop Friday as weather forecasts called for moderation in the Northeast and marketers cited an abundance of available gas. Rockies, the Midwest and the Gulf Coast were all lower. At the close of trading, December futures had dropped 10.5 cents to $3.503 and January was off by 10.3 cents to $3.634. December crude oil gained 98 cents to $86.07/bbl.

Spectra Energy Corp. is taking a one-third interest in the Sand Hills and Southern Hills pipelines, both of which are under construction by DCP Midstream LLC, a joint venture of Spectra and Phillips 66. The deal is expected to close by the end of November when Spectra, Phillips 66 and DCP Midstream each would own one-third of the pipelines and equally fund their completion. The aggregate investment by Spectra is expected to be $700-800 million. Sand Hills, which would take natural gas liquids from the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale to Gulf Coast markets, would have an initial capacity of 200,000 b/d and be expandable to 350,000 b/d. The first phase recently came online and connection to Mont Belvieu, TX, is expected by year-end (see Shale Daily, Oct. 29). The timing of Sand Hills’ second phase, the Permian portion of the pipeline, has advanced and is due to be in service in 2Q2013. Southern Hills would provide 150,000 b/d, expandable to 175,000 b/d, of capacity from the Midcontinent to Mont Belvieu and has a targeted in-service date of mid-2013.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has launched an enhanced natural gas safety technology available to the industry that it said would validate the maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) for safe gas operations. The MAOP Validation Calculator is the result of a four-year license agreement between PG&E and Coler & Colantonio Inc., a privately owned firm that specializes in, among other things, pipeline software and services. The technology is incorporated into a geospacial information system, or GIS, and the software performs calculations to validate the MAOP for each pipeline component. The calculator output allows for standardized report generation and the engineering analysis of MAOP validation issues.

New Brunswick should require a portion of any natural gas found in its shale plays be set aside for use in the province and should put in place a water use strategy for the shale gas industry, but it should not place a moratorium on the industry, according to a report by Louis LaPierre, a professor emeritus in biology at the University of Moncton.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Zone 4 cash basis will remain weak for a while, although it will see an uplift of about 50 cents at the end of the year when the pipeline’s Northeast Supply Diversification project and National Fuel’s Northern Access expansion come online, Bentek Energy LLC said in a recent market note.

Houston explorer Marathon Oil Corp. is reducing its rig count in the Eagle Ford Shale because of drilling efficiencies and dropped rigs in the Anadarko Woodford and Bakken plays in response to a “continued decline in natural gas liquids (NGL) and natural gas prices,” the company said Wednesday.

Williams late Thursday said it is drawing up plans to build the first propane dehydrogenation (PDH) facility in Canada, which would give it room to increase its polymer-grade propylene production to serve a growing petrochemical market.