Current

Barring extreme weather this summer, natural gas prices aren’t likely to vary too much from their current trading range, said FERC staffer Eric Primosch of the Commission’s Office of Enforcement (OE).

Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (PXD) has made a buyout offer to Pioneer Southwest Energy Partners LP(PSE) with the goal of consolidating the companies’ properties in the Midland Basin in West Texas.

Gulfport Energy Corp. expects to increase the number operated horizontal rig count in the Utica Shale to seven from the current four by the end of June, and it has budgeted $494-504 million to drill 55-60 gross (49-54 net) wells in the play this year, company officials said Wednesday.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple on Monday signed into law a measure (HB 1134) offering tax breaks to oil and natural gas operators as an incentive to cut flaring of associated gas at the wellhead on oil wells. HB 1134 was passed last week by the North Dakota legislature. It will be effective July 1.

Range Resources Corp.’s management team is “convinced” that its best wells are still to come in the Marcellus Shale after some new wells punched into a previously drilled area with five years of production history were “substantially better than previous wells,” COO Ray Walker said.

The continuing shale gas boom is having a “massive impact” on the U.S. energy market, particularly a revival for various smart grid developments, according to a report released by IMS Research, a unit of the global research/consulting firm IHS.

Idaho regulators have taken steps to make sure local MDU Resources Group utility Intermountain Gas Co.’s current projected surplus of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that is sold to nonutility customers includes benefits for the retail regulated gas utility customers.

As part of a current fiscal year $90 million program, the California Energy Commission (CEC) on Wednesday awarded two more grants totaling nearly $700,000 to help advance alternative fuel and vehicle technology throughout the state. One grant ($278,000) went to a Southern California school district in Upland, CA, to update the district’s compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling facility to expand its fleet of CNG-powered buses. A second award ($400,000) went to Greenkraft Inc., an automotive manufacturer in Anaheim, CA, to use as buy-down incentives on the purchase of 40 medium-duty propane trucks. These incentives help pay the difference between alternative fuel vehicles and conventional ones. They are available only for new natural gas- and propane-powered vehicles that meet all of the emissions requirements of the California Air Resources Board. The CEC administers the state’s “Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program,” created by the state legislature in AB 118 a few years ago.

Consumers generally favor increased domestic energy production but have mixed feelings about the current natural gas boom, a recent poll by the University of Texas at Austin (UT) found. In particular, the survey illustrates how sharply divided the public remains over the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for well stimulation.