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Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead is considering a pre-drilling water testing requirement for oil and natural gas operators in the state.

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.

Is the next U.S. energy boom following shale going to evolve around oilsands? A Canadian producer is testing the viability of the unconventional oil based on its work to date in Utah.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) late Monday filed a lawsuit in a county district court seeking to invalidate the city of Longmont’s ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) within its city limits. COGA told the court the resolution essentially is a ban on oil/natural gas drilling.

The San Antonio, TX, metropolitan area has gained about 4,000 jobs from the Eagle Ford shale Play, and its upcoming major road improvements could tap up to $12 million annually from the oil/gas development, according to a report released Tuesday by the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, crude, metals and agricultural commodities markets are more highly correlated with each other and the S&P 500, so traders need to watch out. Good reason not to roll one’s eyes at natural gas, which lately some have dismissed as boring, an energy commodity markets veteran said.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, crude, metals and agricultural commodities markets are more highly correlated with each other and the S&P 500, so traders need to watch out. Good reason not to roll one’s eyes at natural gas, which lately some have dismissed as boring, an energy commodity markets veteran said.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. has completed sales of its Permian Basin properties, which allows it to reduce the outstanding balance on existing term loans to $1.2 billion from $4 billion by the end of this month. The company said it plans to fully repay the term loans by the end of the year. The assets sold produced close to 21,000 b/d of liquids and 90 MMcf/d of natural gas in 2Q2012, or about 5.7% of Chesapeake’s production during the period. The multi-sales package was announced in September (see Shale Daily, Sept. 13). SWEPI LP, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, bought the southern Delaware Basin assets, while the northern Delaware Basin portion was sold to Chevron U.S.A. Inc., a subsidiary of Chevron Corp. The producing assets in the Midland Basin were sold to affiliates of Houston-based EnerVest Ltd.

With energy demand high and producers climbing over each other in the Marcellus Shale region, the Northeast remains “ripe with bottlenecks,” and it’s likely to get more congested before natural gas infrastructure is completed, Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said last week.