Balance

In response to continued low natural gas prices and “as an effort to help bring U.S. natural gas supply and demand into better balance,” Chesapeake Energy Corp. said late Tuesday it has now upped its curtailments to about 1 Bcf/d of gross operated gas output, or about 1.5% of U.S. Lower 48 gas production, primarily in the Haynesville and Barnett shale plays.

A plan unveiled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Colorado on Monday that was 10 years in the making, which attempts to balance oil and gas exploration with other uses across a 2.4 million-acre swath of land in northwestern Colorado, is drawing criticism from conservation groups, landowners and energy producers.

While Southern California utilities seek balance in their approaches to renewables and natural gas-fired electric generation, a group of German solar companies touted the prospects for increased growth in solar photovoltaic (PV) technology on a global basis, regardless of another revolution taking place in the North American shale gas patch.

SM Energy Co. has agreed to sell its Marcellus Shale assets in Pennsylvania, including its entire 42,000-acre leasehold and associated pipeline assets in McKean and Potter counties, to a subsidiary of Houston-based Endeavour International Corp. for approximately $80 million, the companies 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.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s shift to balance its natural gas-weighted portfolio required a lot of spending last year — an estimated $4.7 billion — to acquire liquids-rich property, but the risky outlay already is proving its worth, CEO Aubrey McClendon said this week.

Tennessee lifted Friday an Imbalance Warning for Zones 5 and 6, but asked customers to stay in balance.

The Maryland House of Delegates has approved a bill that would freeze the permitting of Marcellus Shale drilling until 2013 while state agencies review the results of various studies into Marcellus development and hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking), including a major study being performed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (see Shale Daily, Feb. 24).

Growing natural gas liquids (NGL) production — particularly that of ethane — is a positive story for the petrochemical industry as well as oil and gas producers. However, talk of an NGL glut is growing louder as the industry continues to grow production — particularly from liquids-rich shale plays — and build out infrastructure. Opinions vary on what is to come.