Earthquakes

Mexican officials will push for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s energy reform to the very last day of his administration in 2018, Energy Secretary Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said Monday.

Mexican regulator Comision Reguladora de Energia (CRE) suspended reporting requirements for energy market participants for the rest of week, as a result ofthe earthquake that hit central Mexico on Tuesday afternoon.

The strongest earthquake in Mexico in more than a century, which struck near midnight on Thursday, initially appears to have spared the natural gas and oil industry.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, in an effort to discover ways to improve operations of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), issued an executive order (EO) Monday creating a five-member task force to conduct an organizational analysis of the agency.

Regulators in Oklahoma issued an earthquake advisory and launched an investigation focused on oil and gas wastewater disposal wells after a series of earthquakes struck the state, including a 4.2-magnitude temblor that struck near Edmond, a suburb of Oklahoma City, on Wednesday night.

The County of Los Angeles on Monday asked the Los Angeles Superior Court for an injunction to prevent the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field from reopening until state regulators complete an earthquake and risk analysis.

A pair of small earthquakes struck north-central Oklahoma about an hour apart early Thursday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Seismic activity thought to be caused by human actions — mainly drilling wastewater injection — declined in Oklahoma last year, possibly because of limits placed on disposal wells, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said Wednesday.

Regulators and researchers in Oklahoma, anticipating a major increase in oil and gas drilling in the state’s stacked reservoirs, have jointly developed new seismicity guidelines intended to reduce the risk of earthquakes.