Grow

Oil and gas producer North American capital expenditures (capex) will continue to grow next year but not as fast as it did this year, predicted analysts at Raymond James & Associates Inc. The global economic outlook and oil prices will drive spending trends, the firm said.

The Pennsylvania governor who led the state through the first years of the Marcellus Shale boom said the natural gas industry has “screwed up so badly” that it brought a tide of negative public opinion on itself.

Royal Dutch Shell said it expects to decide by the end of the year where it will build a “world-scale” ethylene cracker in the Marcellus Shale region, and it said the three states where it is considering construction of the facility are Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

General Electric on Tuesday introduced a new tool to grow the biogas-fueled on-site generation market that takes advantage of fuels from landfills, wastewater treatment plants and agricultural waste.

In the aftermath of a continuing string of natural gas pipeline/infrastructure failures, the pressure from federal and state regulators will grow and so too will the capital expenditures (capex) among utilities and large transmission pipeline operators, according to Southwest Gas Corp. CEO Jeffrey Shaw. He made the observations earlier in August in response to questions from financial analysts.

Some sort of universal disclosure is needed throughout the oil and gas industry regarding hydraulic fracturing (fracking), Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper recently told an energy conference.

West Virginia, which collected less than $55 million in severance taxes from natural gas operations last year, could see that number jump to nearly $120 million by 2016, thanks in large part to the state’s growing Marcellus Shale industry, according to Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow.

The number of parties unhappy with the low level of industry representation on President Obama’s new hydraulic fracturing (fracking) advisory panel continues to grow as answers are sought and questions surrounding the Department of Energy’s (DOE) motives arise.

Now that the energy industry is done marveling at the shale gas revolution and is believing in abundant gas supplies for years to come, a similar North American supply renaissance is in the making in crude oil, Bentek Energy LLC’s Jim Simpson told attendees at GasMart 2011 in Chicago Wednesday.