Five

A group of five senators has called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to define swaps, security-based swaps and other key terms so that limits on market speculation can be put into effect.

California’s five-member state regulatory commission is showing some cracks in its usual solid consensus after 10 years of being headed by a former utility senior executive. This became apparent Thursday when a proposal by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to invest utility ratepayer funds in a solar demonstration facility was rejected on a 3-2 vote.

Hollywood is preparing to bring Marcellus Shale oil and natural gas drilling to the big screen next winter and has started filming in Western Pennsylvania.

A Canadian family doctors’ association has called for the government of New Brunswick to enact a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), while researchers with the University of New Brunswick (UNB) are urging Fredericton to proceed with caution.

The Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) said Monday it plans to conduct a public forum on electric (EV) and natural gas vehicles (NGV) to help the five-member PUC and other state agencies determine how they can best foster stepped up investment in alternative fuel vehicles.

The cash market slumped another five cents on average Friday with virtually all locations posting losses and Northeast locations suffering the greatest setbacks as hyper-warmth was forecast to return to the area on Monday. California points also weakened. Futures held relatively steady and at the close May had eased two-tenths of a cent to $1.989 and June had fallen eight-tenths of a cent to $2.084. May crude oil dropped 81 cents to $102.83/bbl.

Climate change impacts are lessened when power plants burn natural gas instead of coal, but the same is not necessarily true when vehicles burn natural gas instead of traditional fuels because methane leakage more than offsets the clean-burning benefits of gas, according to a methane leakage model developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and university researchers. However, the gas industry countered that the model relies on “outdated and incomplete” data.

Even with the intense media coverage of of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), most people haven’t heard about it or are unfamiliar with the practice, according to a nationwide poll conducted in March by the University of Texas at Austin (UT). Of the one-third familiar with fracking “support outweighed opposition, 48% to 36%.”

Atlas Resource Partners LP (ARP) has entered into a joint venture (JV) agreement with subsidiaries of Canada’s Equal Energy Ltd. in the core area of the Mississippian Lime, a formation in Oklahoma and Kansas rich in oil and natural gas liquids (NGL).