Elected

Elected officials in Delaware County, NY, are demanding that the state and New York City pay $81.3 billion in reparations over 60 years for lost property rights, on the grounds that a proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the city’s extended watershed would exclude 80% of the county’s land from Marcellus Shale drilling.

Elected officials in a third town in Colorado, Erie, on Wednesday night adopted a six-month moratorium on oil/gas development on an emergency basis, making the halt effective immediately.

Elected officials in Cecil Township, PA, voted Monday to have the township solicitor look into mounting a legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s new Marcellus Shale law on the grounds that it usurps local zoning authority.

Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) Commissioner Barry Smitherman was unanimously elected RRC chairman. He replaces former Chair Elizabeth Ames Jones, who left the commission to devote more time to her campaign for Texas Senate (see Daily GPI, Feb. 15). Her seat on the three-member RRC has yet to be filled. Smitherman was appointed to the RRC in July 2011. Previously he sat on the Public Utility Commission of Texas, where in 2007 he became chairman. Smitherman currently serves as Texas’ representative on the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, as vice chair of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ gas committee. He is on the visiting committee of the Bureau of Economic Geology with the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas School of Law Center for Global Energy, International Arbitration, and Environmental Law, and the Eanes Education Foundation advisory board.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Camille “Bud” George plans to retire at the end of the year. First elected in 1974, the Democrat from shale-rich Clearfield County, in the central part of the state, has been the top ranking Democrat on environmental issues since 1983. As Democratic Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (previously known as the House Conservation Committee) George recently became a critic of shale development. He proposed a 30 cent/Mcf severance tax on high-volume shale wells (among the highest rate offered by any lawmaker during the debates) and suggested that lawmakers shouldn’t be afraid to continue delaying passage of the bill if it did not contain “the protections that you and I want not only for ourselves, but for those that we represent.” George also claimed that the recommendations of the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission didn’t go far enough to protect environmental resources in the state. His announcement follows news that Sen. Mary Jo White, the Republican chair of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, will also retire this year.

The physical and futures markets elected to part company Thursday with a majority of the cash market firming and futures heading south. While most cash points upticked by less than a dime for a second straight day, more than a handful of Northeast averages once again dropped by between 20 cents to nearly a half dollar.

Tulsa-based WPX Energy, which recently spun off from Williams as an independent exploration and production company, has elected its 10-member board of directors. William G. Lowrie, the former deputy CEO of a BP plc predecessor company, is to chair the company, which is focused on natural gas, natural gas liquids and oil reserves, particularly in the Piceance Basin, Bakken Shale and Marcellus Shale. The directors are WPX CEO Ralph A. Hill, Kimberly S. Bowers, John A. Carrig, William R. Granberry, Don J. Gunther, Robert K. Herdman, Henry E. Lentz, George A. Lorch and David F. Work. Lorch is to serve as chair of the board’s nominating and governance committee. Granberry was appointed to serve as chair of the compensation committee, while Herdman will chair the audit committee.

Exasperated with being at the center of a pitched debate over the safety of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), elected officials in Dimock Township, PA, voted unanimously to decline an offer by the city of Binghamton, NY, about 30 miles away, to deliver potable water supplies to some of the town’s residents.

Elected officials in Cecil Township, PA, voted unanimously on Monday to adopt changes to two of its ordinances governing Marcellus Shale development but are still waiting to hear if Range Resources Corp. will drop a lawsuit it filed against them in October over the changes.