Days

BP plc executives are hopeful that they can complete “in a few days” the $7.8 billion settlement tentatively reached last month with thousands of individuals and businesses that were impacted by the April 2010 Macondo well blowout in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said Thursday at the company’s annual meeting.

With the final pollution standards for the oil and natural gas industry due to be issued within days, the industry is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. An official with the American Petroleum Institute (API) said the group hopes the rule will be “reasonable” and “achievable,” while at the same time stressing that industry does not oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to reduce emissions from oil and gas operations.

Spot natural gas made it three straight days of advances Wednesday as attractive storage differentials at some Western points, along with cooler weather, prompted buying in most regions of the country. A handful of Northeast locations were the exception as the posted double-digit drops, mostly between a dime and 30 cents. At the close of futures trading May had fallen 4.6 cents to $2.141 and June had skidded 5.1 cents to $2.267. May crude oil tumbled $2.54 to $101.47/bbl.

Last month was the warmest March since 1950 based on natural gas-weighted heating degree days (GWHDD), with decades-old temperature records falling in cities across the United States, weather analysts said Monday.

Three days of fiery debate in the Senate on the Obama administration’s energy policies came to a quiet end Thursday with the defeat of a Democratic-sponsored bill that proposed rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and natural gas producers.

California lawmakers are rekindling an effort that died last year to place chemical disclosure requirements on oil and natural gas producers that use hydraulic fracturing (fracking) well stimulation.

Three days of fiery debate in the Senate on the Obama administration’s energy policies came to a quiet end Thursday with the defeat of a Democratic-sponsored bill that proposed rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and natural gas producers.

Days after visiting natural gas operations in the Marcellus Shale, Poland’s treasury minister said commercial shale gas production may begin in his country in 2014.

It’s early days in Chevron Corp.’s shale natural gas and oil program, but it is “an area of significant long-term growth” with opportunities in the United States, Canada, Argentina, China and Europe — in liquids and dry gas — an executive said during the company’s analyst day last week.