Case

July natural gas is set to open unchanged Friday morning at $4.70 as the technical case for higher prices gains new momentum and tropical storm development is on the table. Overnight oil markets rose.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) executives said Thursday there is no early resolution in sight for the regulatory and criminal legal proceedings facing the utility for the 2010 explosion of one of its natural gas pipelines, which killed eight and devastated a San Bruno, CA, neighborhood (see Daily GPI, Sept. 27, 2010).

The top U.S. environmental watchdog has won the right to observe and bark — but not bite — in the next contested Canadian pipeline approval case.

A new destination for shale oil, forecast to reduce market congestion and price discounting across North America, will open in central Canada as a result of a pipeline decision Thursday by the National Energy Board (NEB).

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and two state officials over the ongoing regulatory delay for considering high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in the Empire State.

The top three trade groups that represent the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania filed a petition with the state’s Commonwealth Court on Wednesday, asking that they be allowed to intervene in the ongoing legal battle over Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday denied two leading Republican state lawmakers a chance to argue as interested parties in favor of the General Assembly’s role in passing comprehensive oil and gas legislation into law in 2012.

Levying the largest civil penalty ever — $1.5 million — for an oil and natural gas violation, the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) last Wednesday found a small operator, Halek Operating ND LLC, guilty of violating state standards for disposing of salt water, a byproduct of oil production, in an injection well.

In the wake of a New York appellate court ruling that two local bans on oil and gas activities should be upheld, supporters of shale development in the Empire State worry that the damage may be done, regardless of how the bans fare through a possible appeal.