Davis

Amy Myers Jaffe is joining the University of California, Davis, in October as executive director of energy and sustainability in a joint appointment to the Graduate School of Management and Institute of Transportation Studies. Jaffe has spent the past 16 years at Houston’s Rice University, where she served as director of the Energy Forum at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Kenneth Medlock, deputy director of the forum, was named the new director. Jaffe said she was drawn by the California university’s “focus on sustainability and the interdisciplinary research and relationships between transportation and energy, and by the opportunity to work near California’s state capital, which is an international pioneer on environmental and public policy issues.”

Swift Energy Co. has entered into a long-term agreement for natural gas gathering and processing services in the Eagle Ford Shale with Eagle Ford Gathering LLC, a 50-50 joint venture of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP and Copano Energy LLC.

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. and a private seller of assets in the Williston Basin have leveled a second round of lawsuits against each other in federal court in North Dakota, the latest in a series of legal battles involving about 15,500 gross oil and gas acres.

Texas House lawmakers Wednesday approved a bill that would require disclosure of the contents of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluids used in natural gas wells in the state.

California’s Gov. Gray Davis re-appointed the newest commissioner on the state energy commission, John Geesman, 51, to a full five-year term. Geesman had been appointed last July to fill out a term of a commissioner who retired early.

California’s Gov. Gray Davis signed a slew of energy bills last Tuesday, but only two were significant in their potential impact, and both should help the state’s major private-sector utilities restore their creditworthiness, according to political and industry officials.

Greka Energy Corp., an international vertically integrated oil and gas producer, has completed a Miocene test of its Haspel & Davis #1 well in the Potash Field in Plaquemines Parish, LA to a total depth of 10,604 feet. The well, which was directionally drilled underneath a large salt overhang in inland waters, is expected to have initial production rates of 3 MMcf/d and 350 bbl/d by early September. Greka said the well has the potential to add up to $6.5 million in annual revenue within its Americas division; the company reported $8.5 million in worldwide revenue for the first six months of 2001. More than 360 feet of productive pay zones were encountered, of which almost 160 feet is expected to be gas and 200 feet to be oil.

Facing the prospect of Davis administration regulators sacking electric retail competition, an alliance of large and small interests Tuesday urged California officials to consider alternatives that do not require shutting down the last vestiges of its 1996 restructuring law permitting direct access contracts.

California may have to get in the natural gas business to fuelall of the added 5,000 MW of generation capacity Gov. Gray Davis is promising by this summer, the team of industry and state officialsleading the effort said Tuesday in a conference call with newsmedia. It was acknowledged that most of the added 5,000 MW expectedis gas-fired, and in many cases getting the added capacity onsitewill take more air emission changes and greater plans for fuelsupplies.