Earnings

TransCanada Corp. received the last of three key permits needed for its 485-mile Gulf Coast Project, an oil pipeline from Cushing, OK, to Nederland, TX, that would help alleviate constraints at Cushing where oil from the burgeoning Bakken Shale has been piling.

Natural gas liquids (NGL) drilling has begun to deteriorate in some U.S. basins, Baker Hughes Inc. CEO Martin Craighead said Friday.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. is scheduled to report quarterly earnings late Tuesday, followed by a 9 a.m. ET conference call the following day that may draw a legion eager to hear from CEO Aubrey McClendon about what is taking place at undoubtedly the most tumultuous period in the corporation’s history.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s board of directors Thursday was working with CEO Aubrey McClendon to terminate early the Founder Well Participation Program (FWPP) in which the CEO has a contractual right to participate and invest up to a 2.5% working interest in every new well the company drills.

ConocoPhillips revealed Wednesday that in the last three months of 2011 it acquired more than 100,000 acres in North American liquids-rich shale plays, bringing its unconventional acquisitions last year to more than 500,000 acres.

EQT Corp. is suspending its Huron Shale program “indefinitely” in light of low commodity prices, the Pittsburgh company announced in a one line statement Friday.

The rich are different, and the nouveau riche are different still. Newly premiered reality television show “Bayou Billionaires” demonstrates that it’s a long way from the fictitious East Egg of The Great Gatsby to Shreveport, LA, where Gerald and Kitten Dowden and kin have struck it rich in the Haynesville Shale. Now they want into the country club.

MarkWest Energy Partners LP, which teamed up with private equity fund The Energy & Minerals Group (EMG) three years ago to create one of the largest natural gas processing companies in the Marcellus Shale, now sees a “critical” need to create similar midstream infrastructure in the emerging Utica Shale, CEO Frank Semple said late Monday.

In the coming year Denver-based QEP Resources Inc. and its QEP Energy exploration and production (E&P) unit will spend within earnings and manage production with an eye on prices, CEO Charles Stanley told financial analysts during a meeting Monday. Spending will focus on higher-return oily assets at the expense of natural gas plays.