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FERC is considering modifications to its policies for evaluating oil pipeline index rate changes and data reporting requirements that would make it easier for shippers to challenge rates that they believe exceed industry costs.

The amount of natural gas traded in the United States increased in 2015 for the first time in four years, with overall trading volumes up 4.1% compared to 2014, according to an analysis of FERC Form 552 submissions by Cornerstone Research.

After gaining access earlier this year to a big bundle of onshore and offshore opportunities in the United States, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. now is reworking its strategy to relieve the cost burden and increase production, top executives said last week.

George Phydias Mitchell, 94, who is credited with pioneering unconventional drilling techniques that have opened up North America’s natural gas and oil potential, died Friday at his home in Galveston, TX.

Members of a panel testifying at a hearing of a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs subcommittee last week warned that allowing global conglomerates to own multiple pieces of the production and marketing chain for any commodity, including oil and natural gas, while simultaneously also speculating on the price of those commodities, opens the door to potential manipulation of prices.

Competition from U.S. exporters in Ontario and Quebec has a silver lining for sponsors of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia (BC).

Federal regulators, working with Walter Oil & Gas Corp., said Friday they were continuing to oversee and coordinate response efforts to secure the producer’s South Timbalier Block 220 natural gas well in the shallow Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which blew out last Tuesday and ignited a fire later that night.

Spot prices for U.S. natural gas at most major trading points increased on average 40-60% in the first half of 2013 (1H2013) from a year earlier as demand eclipsed supply, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week.

California regulators are facing increased scrutiny on their response to stepping up natural gas pipeline safety oversight following a 2010 explosion in San Bruno on a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) line.