Encourage

The Texas Senate has passed HB 2767, which is intended to encourage the recycling of wastewater from drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations for reuse rather than injection of the waste into disposal wells. The legislation aims to clear up legal ambiguities around responsibility for transferred drilling waste.

While both oil and gas production rates in the Bakken Shale set records in February, there’s much more to come. With a large increase in multi-well pad operations, North Dakota’s chief oil and natural gas regulator expects to see “a big surge in production” in the Bakken Shale starting in June.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scheduled three forums on natural gas issues in May. The forums, which would be held in a roundtable format “to encourage discussion and allow flexibility to find areas of agreement,” would include input from members and a variety of stakeholders, according to committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Topics for the forums are “Infrastructure, Transportation, Research and Innovation” (May 16), “Domestic Supply and Exports” (May 21) and “Shale Development: Best Practices and Environmental Concerns” (May 23).

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scheduled three forums on natural gas issues in May. The forums, which would be held in a roundtable format “to encourage discussion and allow flexibility to find areas of agreement,” would include input from members and a variety of stakeholders, according to committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Topics for the forums are “Infrastructure, Transportation, Research and Innovation” (May 16), “Domestic Supply and Exports” (May 21) and “Shale Development: Best Practices and Environmental Concerns” (May 23).

New rules to encourage the state’s oil and natural gas operators to conserve water used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) processes were adopted Tuesday by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC).

A legislator in the Pennsylvania General Assembly introduced two bills on Wednesday to amend the state constitution and make the secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) a commissioner post elected by the public, rather than one appointed by the governor.

Shale gas is a doubled-edged sword for power generators in the Mid-Atlantic region, supplying them with abundant, low-cost gas while at the same time putting pressure on an already over-taxed pipeline infrastructure, generators said Thursday at the fifth and final FERC conference on gas-power coordination issues.

Canada’s natural gas producers on Thursday threw their support behind an indepth study by the British Columbia (BC) Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) on “observed induced seismic activity” in the Horn River Basin, which concluded that operators should conduct more monitoring and data collection to ensure continued community safety.

For a second consecutive year, the vibrant history of North Dakota’s oil and natural gas drilling has been replicated in a large illustrated map indicating all 3,461 wells in the Bakken and Three Forks formation at the end of 2011. The map was jointly published by the North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC) and Energy/Environmental Research Center.