Extent

Natural gas producers don’t owe a duty to develop each and every “economically exploitable strata” under a landowner’s property, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled last month.

Rex Energy Corp. said it is “pleased” with the results so far from a well targeting Ohio’s Utica Shale, but it is disappointed with a third-party well completion technique at a second well and blamed bad weather for delays in putting other wells into sales.

To ensure compliance with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulations, the American Gas Association (AGA) has asked the agency to clarify the extent to which non-financial contracts for the physical delivery of natural gas are within the scope of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act’s regulation of “swaps.”

Enbridge Inc. and Energy Transfer are planning to develop a pipeline to carry crude oil from Western Canada and the Bakken Shale, by way of the Patoka, IL, hub to the eastern Gulf Coast in a project that would convert portions of the Trunkline Gas Co. LLC natural gas system to oil service.

Authorities Tuesday said no one was killed after a 20-inch diameter transmission line owned by NiSource Inc. exploded just after midday near its Columbia Gas Transmission Lanham Compressor Station near Sissonville, WV, a rural community of 4,000 about 15 miles north of the state capital, Charleston.

In separate announcements, Gulfport Energy Corp. and Seneca Resources Corp. reported that they are achieving encouraging production results from some of the first horizontal wells drilled in the Utica Shale.

Majors and national oil companies (NOC) are about to go shopping again, and their most likely targets are companies such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp., EOG Resources Inc., Whiting Petroleum Corp., Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp. and Forest Oil Corp., Wells Fargo Securities analysts said in a note last week.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. announced Tuesday that its gross production in the Marcellus Shale has averaged more than 700 MMcf/d for the last two weeks, hitting a record 752 MMcf for one 24-hour period.

Based on production data verifiable to date, the Marcellus Shale will become the “King of the Gas Shales” by 2015 at the latest, U.S. energy analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said in a new report.