Fixed

Rosetta Resources Inc. will be dropping more than 90% of its $640 million 2012 capital budget in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, the Houston-based company said Monday.

While the new CEO reiterated Tuesday that San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s focus would remain fixed primarily on utility operations, the energy holding company will continue to look for other opportunities in what was called “contracted energy infrastructure” investments.

To fund increased drilling in core areas of the Marcellus Shale and Piceance Basin, Antero Resources has added $126 million to its capital budget for 2011.

In the second biggest natural gas market in the United States, California energy officials have kept a keen eye fixed on shale gas, and their revised energy plans and forecasts next year and beyond will reflect a greater impact from North America’s energy game-changer, the author of the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) latest report on shale gas told NGI during an interview this week.

ExxonMobil Corp. said it has completed the world’s longest extended-reach well drilled from an existing offshore fixed platform drilling rig, increasing the company’s ability to produce domestic oil and gas from existing facilities at the Santa Ynez unit, offshore Southern California. The well, drilled from the Heritage platform using the producer’s Fast Drill technology, extends more than six miles horizontally and more than 7,000 feet below sea level. According to ExxonMobil, the well will be able to produce an additional 5.8 million boe, an amount equal to the annual energy consumption of more than 144,000 Californians.

ExxonMobil Corp. said it has completed the world’s longest extended-reach well drilled from an existing offshore fixed platform drilling rig, increasing the company’s ability to produce domestic oil and gas from existing facilities at the Santa Ynez unit, offshore Southern California. The well, drilled from the Heritage platform using the producer’s Fast Drill technology, extends more than six miles horizontally and more than 7,000 feet below sea level. According to ExxonMobil, the well will be able to produce an additional 5.8 million boe, an amount equal to the annual energy consumption of more than 144,000 Californians.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Friday moved to bring the Henry Financial LD1 Fixed Price contract traded on the IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. (ICE) under its regulatory authority, saying the contract “performs a significant price discovery function.” The ICE contract is a “look-alike” contract to the CME Group’s Nymex Henry Hub contract, which already is under CFTC regulation.

Exelon Corp. increased its all-stock offer for NRG Energy by 12.4% last Thursday, upping its bid to a fixed exchange ratio of 0.545 of Exelon common stock for each NRG share from the previously offered ratio of 0.485. The deal is now worth about $7.75 billion. The richer offer comes after Exelon dug deeper to find cost synergies, including in the Reliant Energy retail business, which NRG recently acquired.

Right or wrong, the five-year-old perception that Enron Corp. caused California’s energy crisis in 2000-2001 remains fixed in the collective mind of the nation’s most populous state, and the reaction Thursday to the guilty verdicts against Enron’s two former leaders for the most part was that justice had been done, but the state’s electricity consumers continue to pay for the former executives’ misdeeds.