Backed

Nevada’s state Senate on Wednesday gave unanimous approval to a utility-backed proposal (SB 123) to retire coal-fired generation in the state and to usher in more natural gas-fired and renewable generation in the years ahead. SB 123 now goes to the lower house Assembly for action.

Hess Corp. has ended a proxy battle with major shareholder Elliott Management Corp. (4.4%) by agreeing to appoint three Elliott-backed nominees to its board of directors. The reconstituted board would comprise 14 members; nine were replaced following the annual meeting Thursday. The activist hedge fund, which had claimed that the company was mismanaged and controlled by Hess family interests, agreed to support five Hess nominees. The board now will be reelected every year instead of every three. Elliott also led the charge to split the chairman and CEO roles, now held by John Hess, the son of the company’s founder, and it has forced the company to sell its downstream arm and monetize Bakken Shale midstream assets.

Rangeland Energy is buying land near Loving, NM, where it plans to develop a large terminal facility to handle crude oil, frack sand, pipe and other products; plans for a crude oil pipeline to the terminal also are in the works, the company said Monday.

Backed by a plethora of natural gas supplies from its upstream business, ExxonMobil Chemical Co.’s multi-billion-dollar plan to expand its Baytown, TX, petrochemicals complex is on track, an executive said last week at the IHS CERAWeek 2013 conference in Houston.

A new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Services (CRS) has backed up Republican lawmakers’ claims that all of the increase in oil and natural gas production that occurred during the past five years has been on state and private — rather than federal — lands. For the most part, state and private lands are where the shale action is.

Backed by a plethora of natural gas supplies from its upstream business, ExxonMobil Chemical Co.’s multi-billion-dollar plan to expand its Baytown, TX, petrochemicals complex is on track, an executive said Tuesday at the IHS CERAWeek 2013 conference in Houston.

A new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Services (CRS) has backed up Republican lawmakers’ claims that all of the increase in oil and natural gas production that occurred during the past five years has been on state and private — rather than federal — lands.

The Marcellus and Utica shales aren’t drawing near the attention they have been, according to a review of 4Q2012 mergers and transactions (M&A) in the United States by PwC US.

A horizontal well targeting the Cotton Valley formation in northern Louisiana recently flowed at an initial production rate of 3,019 boe/d over a 24-hour period, according to privately held producer Indigo Minerals LLC.