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DCP Midstream LLC s holding a nonbinding open season through Dec. 9 for the proposed DCP Sandhills Pipeline. The natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline would run more than 700 miles from West Texas to fractionation and storage facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast including those at Mont Belvieu, TX.

The deepwater port license application submitted by TORP Terminal LP for the Bienville Offshore Energy Terminal has been approved by U.S. Maritime Administrator David T. Matsuda.

David Meister, a partner in the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, has been named director of enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. A former federal criminal prosecutor, he has nearly 25 years of experience in investigations, litigation and trials involving fraud and other complex schemes relating to U.S. financial markets. Meister previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he was a member of that Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Vincent McGonagle, who has been acting director of enforcement since Oct. 1, will continue in that capacity until Meister joins the agency.

ExxonMobil Corp. has no plans in the near-term to curtail any of its U.S. natural gas production, a company executive said Thursday.

ExxonMobil Corp. has no plans in the near-term to curtail any of its U.S. natural gas production, a company executive said Thursday.

ExxonMobil Corp. in July quietly purchased more acreage in the Haynesville/Bossier Shale, a company executive disclosed Thursday.

Citing the need for a national clean energy standard, NRG Energy Inc. CEO David Crane lashed out (again) Wednesday at what he calls the “tyranny of natural gas” as part of his pitch for Congress to consider not only a national renewable energy standard, but a clean energy standard including all zero-emission options, such as nuclear generating plants.

Alexander B. Grannis, chief of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), was fired by Gov. David Paterson late last Thursday after an unsigned memo was leaked to the press disparaging staff cutsthat would, among other things, impede the agency’s effectiveness to oversee natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

New York Gov. David Paterson’s proposed plans to lay off hundreds of state employees could be scuttled at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)if permitting fees from new Marcellus Shale wells were dedicated to staffing, the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York (IOGA) said Monday.