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The CEO at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Yakout Mansour, announced Tuesday that he plans to retire June 1, the date of the 40th anniversary of the start of his electric industry career. Mansour will leave having led the state grid operator through several long-sought milestones, such as the launch of the CAISO-redesigned market in 2009, Market Redesign Technology Upgrade (MRTU), which struggled for years to get under way. During Mansour’s six years heading the grid operator it has studied and approved $9.5 billion in transmission expansion projects, and concluded that there is now adequate transmission infrastructure in place or being built to support the state’s new renewable energy goal of 33% by 2020. Mansour said he feels that in his tenure he has helped “restore confidence in California’s wholesale energy market” that was badly tattered in the 2000-2001 wholesale energy market meltdown in the West. A CAISO oversight board member, Bob Foster, called Mansour “hugely successful” in lowering power costs and the costs at the grid operator.

Enterprise Products Partners LP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. have struck another midstream services deal to handle growing production from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

Houston’s Newfield Exploration Co. has signed two separate agreements totaling $308 million that will add about 70,000 net acres to its unconventional oil and gas holdings in Utah’s Uinta Basin.

Natural gas wells in Texas would have to be at least 1,200 feet from public schools if a bill filed Monday in the state legislature becomes law, but a group advocating the interests of Fort Worth neighborhoods says it wants wells to be one mile or more from the schoolhouse.

Supporters and opponents of hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) have taken turns voicing their opinions in an Ohio newspaper in Marcellus territory this month, just days after a nonprofit organization declared the state’s program regulating the practice to be well managed.

Enterprise Products Partners LP has struck 10-year agreements to handle “a substantial portion” of Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s liquids-rich gas production in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.

National Fuel Gas Supply Corp. (Supply) and Empire Pipeline Inc. are holding two open seasons offering firm transportation capacity from the Marcellus Shale in central and southwestern Pennsylvania.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the U.S. oil and natural gas sector has overcome challenges year to date to surpass 2009 levels, an analysis by PwC US said.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the U.S. oil and natural gas sector has overcome challenges year to date to surpass 2009 levels, an analysis by PwC US said.