Ended

Hess Corp. has ended a proxy battle with major shareholder Elliott Management Corp. (4.4%) by agreeing to appoint three Elliott-backed nominees to its board of directors. The reconstituted board would comprise 14 members; nine were replaced following the annual meeting Thursday. The activist hedge fund, which had claimed that the company was mismanaged and controlled by Hess family interests, agreed to support five Hess nominees. The board now will be reelected every year instead of every three. Elliott also led the charge to split the chairman and CEO roles, now held by John Hess, the son of the company’s founder, and it has forced the company to sell its downstream arm and monetize Bakken Shale midstream assets.

After Republicans ended their week-long boycott, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted out the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

During its second fiscal quarter, which ended Feb. 28, Platteville, CO-based independent Synergy Resources Corp. continued its 100% success rate in the Wattenberg Field in the Denver-Julesberg (DJ) Basin. Synergy recently struck a joint venture (JV) agreement in the DJ Basin as well.

U.S. natural gas working inventories hit a record high in November of 3.923 Tcf, but domestic inventories ended January at an estimated 2.7 Tcf, or 0.2 Tcf below January 2012 levels, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said last week. The lower storage numbers were blamed in part on wellhead freeze-offs in several onshore basins.

U.S. natural gas working inventories hit a record high in November of 3.923 Tcf, but domestic inventories ended January at an estimated 2.7 Tcf, or 0.2 Tcf below January 2012 levels, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The lower storage numbers were blamed in part on wellhead freeze-offs in several onshore basins.

Maryland’s fledgling Marcellus Shale industry — which would be based solely in two of the state’s westernmost counties — has ended even before it began, according to Robert Summers, secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).

Maryland’s fledgling Marcellus Shale industry — which would be based solely in two of the state’s westernmost counties — has ended even before it began, according to Robert Summers, secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) ended three days of hearings in Denver Wednesday as it drew closer to finalizing new setback requirements for oil and natural gas wells, but it still fell short of finishing the unpopular and complex task.

The 2012 Atlantic Hurricane season, which officially ended Friday, produced 19 named storms, including 10 hurricanes, one of them major (Category 3 or higher), continuing a decades-long high-activity era in the Atlantic Basin, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The number of named storms this year was well above the average of 12 and the number of hurricanes was above the average of six, but the number of major hurricanes was below the average of three, according to NOAA, which classified the 2012 hurricane seas as above normal. It was the second consecutive year that the mid-Atlantic and Northeast suffered devastating impacts from a named storm. In 2011 it was Hurricane Irene, which turned out the lights on millions of East Coast residents and in doing so cut demand for natural gas by about 2.8 Bcf; this year the region was hit by Hurricane Sandy, which struck the New Jersey coastline Oct. 30. But it was the seventh consecutive year that no major hurricanes hit the United States. The only major hurricane was Hurricane Michael, a Category 3 storm that stayed over the open Atlantic. Hurricane Isaac was the only storm to cause significant disruption to energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico.