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A ballot initiative to raise the Arkansas severance tax on natural gas production being promoted by former gas industry executive Sheffield Nelson has drawn more foes.

Kurt Mix, a 50-year-old former engineer for BP plc, was arrested Tuesday after being charged with two counts of obstructing justice after federal authorities said he intentionally destroyed evidence related to the Macondo well blowout and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico two years ago.

A ballot initiative to raise the Arkansas severance tax on natural gas production being promoted by former gas industry executive Sheffield Nelson recently drew a few more foes, according to the energy industry-backed anti-tax group Arkansans for Jobs & Affordable Energy (AJAE). The Association of Arkansas Counties (AAC), the Poultry Federation and the Northwest Arkansas Council recently signed on in opposition to the tax hike on producers. “…[O]ur association believes a natural gas severance tax increase would be harmful for Arkansas counties and for Arkansans,” said Chris Villines, executive director of the AAC.

For the time being the global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) will remain tight, with regasification/import projects outpacing liquefaction/export projects, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s (S&P).

Cash markets on average eased a penny Wednesday as Midcontinent traders noted storage buying and gas volumes were being used for electric power generation. Northeast markets were weak, but Southern California points worked higher. At the close of futures trading May was unchanged at $1.951 and June had inched lower six-tenths of one cent to $2.042. May crude oil had fallen $1.53 to $102.67/bbl.

California lawmakers are rekindling an effort that died last year to place chemical disclosure requirements on oil and natural gas producers that use hydraulic fracturing (fracking) well stimulation.

Cheap natural gas, courtesy of shale plays, is bringing industry back to the United States, growing economies along the Gulf Coast, in the Northeast and elsewhere. But it has also made holding gas transportation capacity a more dicey prospect for end-users, and there is a risk that some of the energy industry’s risk management muscle could atrophy while on a diet of low prices and low volatility.

Physical prices were off by a couple of cents Friday with weakness at some Northeast and California points being offset by strength in the Midcontinent and elsewhere. Futures settled higher as traders squared books ahead of the weekend, and at the close April had risen by 4.7 cents to $2.326 and May had had gained 1.6 cents to $2.436. April crude oil jumped $1.95 to $107.06/bbl.

Being in the middle is not so much a challenge as an opportunity for DCP Midstream LLC, the Denver-based infrastructure and natural gas liquids (NGL) operator that has an eye on moving into the Bakken, Utica and Marcellus shale plays, according to DCP President Bill Waldheim. He told NGIShale Daily that those are about the only shale plays that fall outside DCP’s reach these days.