Doing

A flash fire erupted early Wednesday morning, injuring four contract workers doing maintenance work at a ConocoPhillips natural gas processing plant in Fremont County in Wyoming. The plant had been idle since Aug. 1 for planned maintenance, officials at the scene told local news media.

There are roughly 36,000 shale wells in the five major shale basins in the United States that have produced nearly 23 Tcf of natural gas and 682 million barrels of oil and condensate, according to a tally gleaned from state regulatory records by Powell Shale Digest, a weekly newsletter specializing in North American shale news and research.

An environmental dividend is emerging for Alberta, Canada’s energy warehouse province, as a bonus of oilsands development.

An environmental dividend is emerging for Canada’s energy warehouse province as a bonus of oilsands development across northern Alberta.

Chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have attracted the most attention from people wary of the well stimulation practice, but water consumption is another worry of fracking skeptics, as evidenced by to two recent reports.

California lawmakers on Thursday rejected an industry-opposed bill (SB 1054) on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but a second fracking measure (AB 591) is still alive.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said development of the Marcellus Shale was “good for the entire state” but conceded that several challenges lay ahead, in part because natural gas prices remain less than $3/Mcf.

Focusing on the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on Wednesday made a pitch for more rules to cover the handling of wastewater produced in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) with the release of a new NRDC report.

Some opponents of exporting liquefied domestic gas argue that doing so would encourage more development of shale gas resources using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) well stimulation. Since fracking is bad (causes pollution), so are liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, they argue. But that’s not how it works, FERC said in approving facilities proposed by Cheniere Energy Inc. units to liquefy and export gas from the Louisiana coast.