Fined

Hawk Field Services LLC (HFS), a subsidiary of Petrohawk Energy Corp., on Tuesday was fined $350,000, ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution and placed on probation for three years for damaging endangered species habitat in the Fayetteville Shale in Van Buren County, AR.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Tuesday fined Chesapeake Energy Corp. nearly $1.09 million for violations related to natural gas drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale.

Chief Gathering LLC, a subsidiary of Chief Oil & Gas, has been fined $34,000 and has agreed to surrender a discharge permit for operations in four counties in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale area after “illegally discharging hydrostatic testing water at a pipeline project” in Lycoming County, PA, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has fined two traders a combined $700,000 for engaging in a fraudulent trade allocation scheme involving natural gas futures contracts and has permanently banned them from trading.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has fined two traders a combined $700,000 for engaging in a fraudulent trade allocation scheme involving natural gas futures contracts and has permanently banned them from trading.

Atlas Resources has been fined $97,350 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for allowing used hydraulic fracturing fluids to overfill a wastewater pit and contaminate a watershed in Washington County, PA, last year.

In response to a mid-2008 incident when it still operated a natural gas utility in the state, PNM Resources’ New Mexico utility was fined $371,000 Tuesday by the state Public Regulation Commission (PRC) for allegedly mishandling a gas leak in an underground vault at a busy Albuquerque intersection. The regulators said it was the largest penalty ever assessed on a utility in the state.

Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has been fined $56,650 for three spills in September of a liquid gel used to fracture natural gas wells, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said. The spills, which occurred in one week’s time at Cabot’s Heitsman gas development in Dimock Township in Susquehanna County, forced Cabot to cease drilling activities in the region for around three weeks until it complied with a state order (see Daily GPI, Oct. 20; Sept. 28). “This penalty was assessed for Cabot’s violations of the Clean Streams Law, Solid Waste Management Act and Oil and Gas Act,” said DEP Northcentral Regional Director Robert Yowell. “We expect that Cabot will do a better job in the future of overseeing its contractors now that the company has an improved preparedness, prevention and contingency plan in place.”

A California-based oil and natural gas company was fined $450,000 and sentenced to a five-year probationary period after pleading guilty to one felony count of operating a pipeline offshore Southern California that the Interior Department previously determined was unfit for service, federal authorities said last Monday.