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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to sign a new bill (HB12-1315) that was passed Wednesday by the state Senate to create a renamed and refocused governor’s energy unit. The Colorado Office of Energy Development would emphasize both traditional and renewable energy resources.

eCorp International LLC and a property owners organization in New York have decided to scrap a “complex” plan to create a company indirectly owned by the landowners and will return to the drawing board, delaying the possibility of bringing waterless hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to the Empire State.

Two companies in southwest Mississippi are proceeding with plans to produce and strengthen sand for hydraulic fracturing. The Blaine Cos., which maintains quarry operations in Natchez, MS, is launching Magnolia Frac Sand LLC, a business division that will produce frack sand for Fores Frac Sand LLC, a new division of Fores Canada Inc., and Fores Resin Coat LLC will strengthen some of the frack sand by coating it with resin. Fores is also installing a handling facility and a loading and storage facility in Natchez. Blain is investing $7 million in Magnolia and Fores is investing $27 million in its Mississippi entry. The project is expected to create about 60 jobs in the Natchez area.

Seeking to create a uniform standard for how the oil and gas industry in the Appalachian Basin goes about drill site planning, developing and restoring the landscape once operations are complete, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has released its first Recommended Practices (RP) report.

The decline in U.S. unconventional natural gas drilling this year may create an unintended consequence: reducing the amount of flowback water that operators reuse at well sites.

Don’t like today’s low natural gas prices? Hang on, they will change, eventually, ConocoPhillips Gas & Power’s Jim Duncan, manager of market research, told a Houston audience Thursday.

Robust natural gas and oil supply growth has the potential by 2020 to “radically reindustrialize” the United States and Canada and create “the New Middle East,” as long as politics don’t get in the way, according to an indepth report prepared by the energy team at Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

Natural gas prices are going to stay low “for quite a while,” and producers are just going to have to deal with it; after all, it’s their fault, Southwestern Energy CEO Steven Mueller told a Houston audience Wednesday.

Natural gas and oil drilling in Ohio could create 65,000 jobs and add nearly $5 billion to state coffers by 2014, according to an industry-sponsored eight-month study that was issued last week.