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Four environmental groups have filed suit against the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) seeking to reduce the amount of drilling approved for Gasco Energy Inc. in Utah’s remote Uinta Basin shale formation.

FERC on Friday gave Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC (TGP) the go-ahead on rehearing to construct and place into service by Nov. 1 its Northeast Upgrade Project, an expansion of the pipeline’s 300 Line that is intended to move more Marcellus Shale gas to Northeast markets.

Four days after Gulfport Energy Corp. said it would buy 30,000 net acres in the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio, the company announced Thursday that the agreement has been amended to include an additional 7,000 net acres for $70 million.

An Ohio judge has ruled that landowners who signed oil and natural gas leases with Chesapeake Exploration LLC have the right to accept better offers from competitors, as long as the original lease is in the primary term, drilling hasn’t started and Chesapeake fails to match the offer.

U.S. hydraulic fracturing (fracking) capacity utilization has fallen by almost one-third since January, and all of the major domestic plays are in a “negative frack pricing environment,” according to PacWest Consulting Partners.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said Tuesday four core U.S. onshore operating plays — the Wattenberg Field in Colorado, the Greater Natural Buttes in Utah, and the Marcellus and Eagle Ford shales — eclipsed production records in November, with each one exceeding a gross processed production milestone of 100,000 boe/d.

In the November offering, 29 tracts totaling slightly less than 10,000 acres of oil and natural gas leases were sold in four southeastern New Mexico counties, including three in the Permian Basin, New Mexico’s Land Office said Monday. All 29 tracts offered were sold among 10 bidders.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has made an impassioned plea to California state regulators that it is “on the right path” to improve pipeline safety and that its four-year upgrade and safety-strengthening plan should be supported for the most part by gas utility ratepayers.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will miss a Nov. 29 deadline for revised rules governing high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), a development that should reopen the rulemaking process to at least one public hearing.