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Continental Resources Inc. has successfully completed its second natural gas well in the Anadarko Woodford play, while the company’s production total continued to rise during 4Q2011.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that although natural gas production in North Dakota has more than doubled since 2005, so far more than 35% of that production for 2011 has been flared or otherwise not marketed because of insufficient infrastructure in the Bakken Shale.

Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp. has agreed to purchase approximately 50,000 net leasehold acres in the Bakken Shale play from an undisclosed private oil and gas company for $540 million in cash and $50 million in stock, and agreed to assume the terms of a drilling rig contract.

“The idle well [count] increased again to 762 wells, approximately 300 above the normal 450, indicating that drilling continues to outpace fracturing services and a need to add approximately 10 crews,” Helms said in his monthly “Director’s Cut” report.

Louisiana has joined other states in requiring the disclosure of the contents of fluids used for hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The rule was proposed earlier this year.

Oil and gas companies operating in North Dakota’s portion of the Bakken Shale are spending about $3 billion on infrastructure projects to capture natural gas currently being lost to flaring at oil drilling sites.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) said it had reviewed air quality test results in the Barnett Shale that found trace amounts of a chemical compound once used widely as a pesticide, but said there is no danger to the public health and the chemical is unlikely to have come from oil and gas activities.

The pummeling of oil and natural gas producer stocks, which began last week, continued Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 634 points on the first day of trading after Standard & Poor’s (S&P) late Friday downgraded the United States credit rating from “AAA” to “AA+.”

The United States can count on selling a growing sliver of its natural gas production to Mexico as the country’s reliance on gas-fired power generation grows, domestic oil production overshadows that of gas, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers spurn the country’s terminals for more lucrative markets, Barclays Capital analysts said last week.