Costs

North Dakota lawmakers continue holding hearings and debating the merits of energy bills to create incentives for less associated gas flaring at the wellhead and to provide tax relief for oil and gas producers, a spokesperson for the state Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) told NGI’s Shale Daily Monday.

While it let go of acreage in the Arkoma and Piceance basins last year, production from Antero Resources’ booming Marcellus Shale activities more than made up for their absence in the company’s portfolio of producing assets.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon’s controversial financing transactions “did not reveal any improper benefit” to him nor did they increases costs to the company “as a result of the overlap in financial relationships,” the board of directors said Wednesday.

California’s electricity grid operator and Portland, OR-based PacifiCorp announced Tuesday an agreement to create a real-time market mechanism for improving the dispatching of power — a widespread efficiency improvement in the electric generation sector that could have lasting impact on demand for natural gas throughout the West.

Consol Energy Inc. announced Friday that it would begin shifting its Utica Shale program in Noble County, OH, from exploration to development mode, after seeing encouraging results and data from its test wells and those of its competitors in the play.

Halliburton, Apache Corp. and Caterpillar have developed a dual-fuel technology for using natural gas and diesel to operate pumping equipment used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at oil and gas well sites.

Noble Energy Inc. is considering a move to larger offices in the Marcellus Shale to accommodate its growing presence in the play.

Four days after Gulfport Energy Corp. said it would buy 30,000 net acres in the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio, the company announced Thursday that the agreement has been amended to include an additional 7,000 net acres for $70 million.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. on Friday has offered a “voluntary separation program” for some of its employees as part of efforts to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. The layoffs, the third round since June, would remove about 2% of Chesapeake’s workforce of nearly 12,500.