Fracking

With the oil and natural gas sector pumping record amounts of revenue into the state’s economy, a freshman member of New Mexico’s legislature has proposed a four-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), Senate Bill (SB) 459, which would surely mean a hit for that economy.

Though hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has transformed the energy sector in the United States, only Argentina in Latin America has followed its lead in commercially developing hydrocarbons through unconventional drilling.

A crack opened Friday in provincial policy walls that have kept unconventional natural gas production out of Eastern Canada, when the New Brunswick legislature voted in favor of at least considering making an exception for a rich drilling target.

Mexico has used hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for considerably more than half a century, and the technique is currently applied to about one in five conventional oil and gas wells, Energy Secretary Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said during a hearing last Thursday before the Chamber of Deputies, the nation’s lower legislative chamber.

Mexico’s upstream regulator has urged the government to spin off a separate natural gas company from state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), along the lines of Russia’s Gazprom, or BP Gas that emerged from the umbrella of the UK-based oil major.

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has overturned a lower court’s decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by a small exploration and production company that is challenging the authority of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to enact a de facto moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Well results quadrupled as Canadians adapted horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to the Montney Shale formation that straddles 130,000 square kilometers (52,000 square miles) of British Columbia (BC) and Alberta, the National Energy Board (NEB) reported.

Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) government said Tuesday it will allow natural gas extraction using unconventional drilling techniques, ending a two-year moratorium.

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) said it is reviewing more than 8,600 written comments received during a four-month public comment period over proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the basin, but a date has not been set for enacting final rules.