Earlier

Aggregate U.S. pressure pumping supply exceeded demand late last year and in the first three months of 2012 capacity utilization averaged 93.4%, a big turnaround in a market that had been undersupplied for two years, according to a new analysis. The shift is challenging oilfield service operators, which already were noting the squeeze in quarterly conference calls.

Mexico’s state-owned electric utility, Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), is reportedly seeking bids from private companies to build about 1,460 miles of natural gas pipeline in the northern part of the country.

Propane player NGL Energy Partners LP announced Monday that it has signed merger agreements with two High Sierra (HSE) entities, creating a diversified company through a cash and stock deal valued at $693 million, less assumed net debt.

Several municipalities in the Southern Tier of New York have adopted nonbinding resolutions that take a stand that would allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a position that dovetails with an assertion by state officials that the drilling stimulation practice, if eventually approved by regulators, only would be permitted in communities that allowed it.

Banking on the possibility that New York will lift its moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the near future, Norse Energy Corp. ASA on Thursday completed a $37 million sale of operated production and other assets in the Empire State to EmKey Resources LLC (see Shale Daily, March 19), giving it cash to focus on core properties in the Marcellus and Utica shales in central New York.

The energy analysts at Raymond James & Associates Inc. spent some time earlier this month at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston and concluded two things: offshore activity in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) continues to improve but in the U.S. onshore, liquids-weighted drilling appears to be slowing down.

WPX Energy Inc. said it has determined through isotopic testing that four contaminated drinking water wells in Susquehanna County, PA, were fouled by naturally occurring methane and not by Marcellus Shale drilling.

A district court judge in Texas has reversed his earlier ruling that oil and natural gas equipment used “below ground” should be exempt from state sales taxes on extraction equipment.

There are billions of dollars worth of assets on the market and “plenty of money” available to Dallas-based Exco Resources Inc. as it pursues several potential acquisitions in the gas market, Exco Resources Inc. CEO Doug Miller said during a conference call with analysts Wednesday.