Drive

The Haynesville, Horn River and Cana Woodford shales may drive Devon Energy Corp.’s future North American natural gas growth, but the Barnett Shale in North Texas “has plenty of running room left,” the company’s exploration chief said last week.

The Haynesville, Horn River and Cana Woodford shales may drive Devon Energy Corp.’s future North American natural gas growth, but the Barnett Shale in North Texas “has plenty of running room left,” the company’s exploration chief said Wednesday.

A mandatory cap on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will not be a magic bullet to drive up demand for natural gas among power generators, according to research by Duke University’s Climate Change Policy Partnership (CCPP).

A mandatory cap on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will not be a magic bullet to drive up demand for natural gas among power generators, according to research by Duke University’s Climate Change Policy Partnership (CCPP).

A marketer had correctly predicted Monday (see Daily GPI, April 7) that the screen softness that day would outweigh any remaining midweek heating load and drive Tuesday’s cash prices lower. But while he looked for mostly modest declines, a large majority of them were in double digits.

The deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) last week yielded two promising discoveries that may hold substantial natural gas and oil reserves.

Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, continuing his drive to impose more accountability into the financial market, has introduced a bill to establish stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of swaps and other over-the-counter financial derivatives by bringing them all into the regulatory fold.

Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, continuing his drive to impose more accountability into the financial market, has introduced a bill to establish stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of swaps and other over-the-counter financial derivatives by bringing them all into the regulatory fold.

Natural gas continued to drive the strong drilling pace in the United States during the first quarter of the year, according to a report issued by the American Petroleum Institute (API). Of the 13,497 wells and dry holes completed in the first quarter, natural gas wells accounted for more than half — 7,459 wells, the API said. While natural gas activity was down 1% from year-ago levels, it was nearly double the drilling activity of a decade ago, the producer group reported. An estimated 4,577 oil wells were completed during the first quarter, up 12% from last year’s comparable period. It was the highest first-quarter estimate of oil activity since 1986, the API said. Total oil well, natural gas well and dry hole activity rose 4% to 13,497 wells during the first three months of the year, it noted. Total estimated exploratory well completions, accounting for nearly 15% of total estimated well completions, rose 37% in the first quarter from the comparable period in 2007, according to the API. Estimated exploratory natural gas wells and dry holes increased 60% and 20%, respectively, during the quarter from year-ago levels. API also reported that total estimated drilling footage rose 1% to 79,804,000 during the first quarter from the same period in 2007. This was the highest estimated first-quarter footage ever, it said.