Different

Colorado legislators and Wyoming regulators are looking at different ways to tighten oversight of their states’ oil and natural gas drilling.

Two separate polls conducted by Quinnipiac University show voters in New York and Ohio have very different opinions of shale gas development, with almost two-thirds of Ohioans saying the economic benefits outweigh any environmental concerns, while nearly half of New Yorkers opposed to drilling.

While California state officials are mulling new regulations related to oil and natural gas drilling, including hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a Stanford-connected engineering researcher/consultant has completed an updated analysis on some earlier work cautioning that fracking can induce seismic activity in geologically active areas, such as some of California’s old producing fields.

Surging shale oil reserves in the United States led BP plc to apparently secure permission, and Royal Dutch Shell plc to apply, for export licenses to ship U.S. crude oil supplies to Canada and possibly elsewhere.

A member of the Pittsburgh City Council has introduced four proposed amendments to the city’s zoning code that would allow 40-acre minimum “mineral extraction districts” for Marcellus Shale drilling.

The different structures of the natural gas and power markets, disparate scheduling cycles and interstate natural gas pipeline constraints are the chief barriers to the efficient coordination of the two markets in the Northeast, regulators and industry officials said Monday.

Unconventional oil and gas drilling within the 13 plays tracked by NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count increased by one rig over the previous week to 890 rigs for the week ending Aug. 10. While some of the plays reporting increases or declines in activity were to be expected, others came as a bit of a surprise.

Black Hills Corp. and NRG Energy Inc. officials last week offered decidedly different views on coal-to-natural gas switching during separate conference calls to discuss 2Q2012 earnings performance.

Under a state law (AB 118) providing up to $100 million annually, the California Energy Commission (CEC) opened its pocketbook again, doling out another $1.7 million for 15 different energy projects, including a number of natural gas vehicle (NGV) programs. More than $500,000 of the grants went to what the CEC called “green transportation” advancements.