Counties

Both oil and natural gas production in the Lone Star state climbed during June from year-ago levels, and the top producing counties remained the familiar Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale region names, according to Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) data.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. no longer wants to fight the state of New York’s moratorium on unconventional drilling and is allowing leases it holds in the Southern Tier to expire.

Colorado’s top oil and natural gas regulator told executives in Denver Tuesday that adopting a culture in the onshore that goes above and beyond what’s legally required will do more than anything to achieve community acceptance.

Under a settlement of a pending court case, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in northwestern Colorado has agreed to reevaluate air quality impacts on 34 authorized, but not yet permitted, oil and natural gas drilling projects in the western part of the state.

New pipeline and compressor infrastructure has helped boost dry gas production in West Virginia and neighboring southern Pennsylvania counties since early 2012, with more growth still expected to come in the region despite strategic shifts by oil and gas companies to more liquids-rich targets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Tuesday.

Consol Energy has drilled its first Upper Devonian Shale well, in Greene County, PA, with results that bode well for the 300,000 acres it controls with commercial Upper Devonian potential.

The Obama administration has issued a presidential permit for the 80-mile U.S. pipeline link in North Dakota that is slated to carry ethane as part of a 430-mile international pipeline through Saskatchewan and terminating in Alberta.

A class action lawsuit in Ohio pending in a Youngstown court could affect property owners attempting to rid themselves of original lease agreements with oil and natural gas operators.

Houston-based ZaZa Energy LLC has struck a deal to sell about 10,300 acres in Fayette, Gonzalez and Lavaca counties in Texas for about $28.8 million to a unit of Sanchez Energy after a deal fell through with another buyer that was unable to fund and close a transaction, parent ZaZa Energy Corp. said. ZaZa calls the acreage its Moulton properties. In March, ZaZa announced two pending Moulton sales: one for $43.3 million for 10,000 acres and another for the remainder of its Moulton properties for $9.2 million (see Shale Daily, March 26). “Given the current landscape, we believe that transacting at this metric was the best and most prudent action for the company at this time,” ZaZa CEO Todd Brooks said of the latest deal. “We remain focused on monetizing select Eagle Ford assets in order to improve our balance sheet, and we are currently pursuing other joint ventures in the area. In the Eaglebine, our joint venture is progressing as planned, and we anticipate timely drilling of the first three wells as part of the agreement [see Shale Daily, April 8].” ZaZa has received a down payment of $1.4 million for the Moulton properties; closing of the sale is expected by July 31.