Country

The U.S. natural gas rig count peaked more than a year ago in August 2010 and continues to drift slowly lower, but the country’s still swimming in gas and there’s no drought in sight, Raymond James & Associates Inc. said Monday.

The meltdown of securities firm giant MF Global Holdings Ltd. is a “fresh slap-in-the-face reminder” of why the country needs tougher financial regulations, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Tuesday.

Even though its home country of France has nixed shale gas and oil exploration, Paris-based Total will continue to seek unconventional resources, a spokesman told NGI’s Shale Daily. Total sees gas as a major player on the world’s energy stage over the next 20 years.

Natural gas producers can thank the hot summer for helping to burn up a large portion of the country’s growing gas production during the third quarter, according to the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) Short-Term Energy Outlook, released last Wednesday.

Natural gas producers can thank the hot summer for helping to burn up a large portion of the country’s growing gas production during the third quarter, according to the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) Short-Term Energy Outlook, released Wednesday.

Canada’s natural resources minister said natural gas would help make the country a “global energy superpower,” emphasizing that the resource can be produced and delivered in a safe and environmentally responsible way.

The promise that shale natural gas holds to transform Ohio’s economy — and that of the nation — is too great to dismiss because of “misconceptions” about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), Gov. John Kasich said Thursday.

Recently announced plans to build a plant in Louisiana to produce gas-to-liquids (GTL) transportation fuels and other products confirm that a GTL strategy “is the country’s best approach for energy independence,” according to Santa Barbara, CA-based Carbon Sciences Inc., the developer of a technology used to make gasoline and other transportation fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide (CO2).

The Marcellus Shale is not only the most economic natural gas basin in the country, it is producing better returns than many oil plays, an energy industry analyst told an audience in Philadelphia recently.