Daily

Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich told business officials during a year-end luncheon on Thursday that he plans to push hard in his second term to reduce the state’s income tax, an effort that could rely in part on increasing fees for the oil and gas industry.

Two state senators from southeast Pennsylvania said they plan to re-introduce bipartisan legislation in early 2015 to enact an impact fee on natural gas gathering and transmission pipelines along the lines of one already in place for production.

Apache Corp. on Monday agreed to a $2.75 billion deal with Woodside Petroleum Ltd. to sell its half-stake in the Kitimat liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in British Columbia (BC), acreage in the Horn River and Liard basins, and its interest in Australia’s Wheatstone LNG facility.

BP plc reported a 7% increase in North American natural gas marketed compared to the year-ago period and had more than double the sales transaction total of its nearest competitor in the third quarter of 2014. Half of the other companies participating in NGI’s 3Q2014 Top North American Gas Marketers Ranking reported decreased sales compared with 3Q2013, leading to a lower overall total.

An oil and natural gas lease sale by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the Ely District in northeast Nevada on Tuesday ran into apparent uncertainty about sage grouse habitat, with only one bid for a single 473-acre parcel.

Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Tom Wolf has selected John Hanger, a former secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and a one-time Democratic candidate for governor, to serve as his secretary of planning and policy.

Fresh from enacting historic energy market reforms, Mexico on Wednesday announced preliminary rules for oil and gas companies to bid on 14 offshore exploratory blocks in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), with the first round of bidding scheduled to take place in 2015.

Stone Energy Corp.’s first Utica Shale well in West Virginia’s Wetzel County had a peak five-day test rate of 30 MMcf/d, the company said, in yet another confirmation of the formation’s potential in the state, where multiple operators began testing it this year (see Shale Daily, March 26).

Eclipse Resources Corp. brought six new operated wells in the Utica Shale online between the end of 3Q2014 and Nov. 30. The wells had “very encouraging” initial results that were within the company’s type curve expectations, Eclipse said.