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The Interior Department is “very close” to releasing rules governing the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and natural gas wells located on public lands, Secretary Sally Jewell said Tuesday in her first appearance before Congress.

Most of the continental United States and northern Alaska will average warmer than normal this spring, while below-normal temperatures are expected for the Pacific Northwest and extreme northern Great Plains, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Spring promises little drought relief for Texas, the Southwest, the Great Plains or Florida, NOAA said. The temperature predictions dovetailed generally with a forecast issued recently by Andover, MA-based Weather Services International, which foresaw a spring warmer than usual in most of the eastern and central United States, but colder-than-normal temperatures are expected to dominate further west (see Daily GPI, Feb. 28).

U.S. natural gas working inventories hit a record high in November of 3.923 Tcf, but domestic inventories ended January at an estimated 2.7 Tcf, or 0.2 Tcf below January 2012 levels, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said last week. The lower storage numbers were blamed in part on wellhead freeze-offs in several onshore basins.

U.S. natural gas working inventories hit a record high in November of 3.923 Tcf, but domestic inventories ended January at an estimated 2.7 Tcf, or 0.2 Tcf below January 2012 levels, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The lower storage numbers were blamed in part on wellhead freeze-offs in several onshore basins.

NFR Energy LLC has closed two private deals worth a combined $736 million to acquire assets in the Anadarko Basin and Eagle Ford Shale. The company also announced that First Reserve Corp. has increased its interest in the parent company, NFR Holdings LLC, to 99.7% and NFR is to be renamed Sabine Oil & Gas LLC.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. can see some daylight following the deluge of U.S. natural gas, but it won’t be until the end of the year that the producer is able to report a decline in domestic output, CEO Aubrey McClendon said Friday.

Encana Corp. CEO Randy Eresman, whose company is one of the largest onshore producers in North America, said Wednesday the company remains “cautiously optimistic about our natural gas price recovery this year. We continue to see evidence on both the demand and supply front that supports this assertion.”

With natural gas stocks at levels below the seasonal norm after a summer of market rebalancing, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA) Monday lifted their 2013 average gas price forecast by 25 cents to $3.75/MMBtu.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans has ruled against Chesapeake Energy Corp. in its bid to reverse a $19.7 million judgment over a canceled oil and gas lease offer in Texas, a decision that may hold implications on canceled lease claims by mineral rights owners in several other states.