Case

With an eye on improved air quality and increased demand, Pennsylvania is making the case that existing regulation allow drivers to convert their vehicles to run on natural gas.

Shortly after several families in northeastern Pennsylvania sued each other over plans by Chief Oil & Gas LLC to build a natural gas transmission pipeline through their neighborhood, the Dallas-based company has joined the fray with its own lawsuit in federal court.

With the bar continually raised on the estimated ultimate recoveries (EUR) from wells drilled in U.S. shale gas plays, determining how to value unconventional acreage is proving to be a diverse, complicated process, according to a new report.

Hawk Field Services LLC (HFS), a subsidiary of Petrohawk Energy Corp., on Tuesday was fined $350,000, ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution and placed on probation for three years for damaging endangered species habitat in the Fayetteville Shale in Van Buren County, AR.

When voters in New Brunswick went to the polls last September, they were still fuming over the incumbent Liberal government’s failed attempt to sell the province’s public utility. Premier David Alward and the Progressive Conservative party were able to harness that dissatisfaction and won the 2010 election in a landslide.

In a case pitting a Sullivan County, NY, homeowner against his property owners association (POA), a Sullivan Civil Supreme Court judge has permanently barred Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. from drilling in the residential subdivision, which is located in the Marcellus Shale.

Range Resources Corp. has gone on the offensive in its battle with a North Texas landowner and a controversial environmental consultant widely believed to have an anti-gas industry agenda. In its response to a lawsuit over alleged water well contamination, the company said it wants to be compensated for millions of dollars in damages caused by false allegations.

With its own strategic business interest at stake, Seal Beach, CA-based Clean Energy Fuels Inc. attempted to make the case Friday for American business supporting national legislation to help boost the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel. Clean Energy’s founder, T. Boone Pickens, is a big backer of the proposed legislation known as NAT GAS Act (see Daily GPI, April 21).

The New York Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee this week reported out of committee legislation to suspend until June 1, 2012 the issuance of new permits to drill that use hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) to extract natural gas or oil.