Half

Cash prices tumbled an average of about a half-dollar Wednesday, led by free-falling multi-dollar drops in New England and other eastern and Northeast points. If those extra-volatile points are removed from the calculations, the overall average drop was of nearly a quarter.

Noble Energy Inc. plans to spend $3.9 billion on capital expenditures (capex) in 2013, almost half of which is to go toward drilling horizontal wells in the Niobrara-Denver Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

Noble Energy Inc. announced Thursday that it plans to spend $3.9 billion on capital expenditures (capex) in 2013, almost half of which will go toward drilling horizontal wells in the Niobrara-Denver Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

ConocoPhillips plans to spend more than half of next year’s capital expenditures (capex) on North America, with a focus on deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and unconventional onshore, the independent said.

Atlas Resource Partners LP (ARP) has picked up its third big leasehold this year in the Barnett Shale by agreeing to pay $255 million to DTE Energy Co. for an affiliate that owns close to 35 million boe of proved reserves in the Fort Worth Basin and in the Marble Falls, TX, area.

Ryckman Creek Resources LLC, a unit of Peregrine Midstream Partners LLC, said it received bids for three and a half times the capacity offered during a recent open season for firm gas storage service at its high-deliverability, multi-cycle Ryckman Creek Gas Storage facility in Uinta County, WY. The offer of 8 Bcf of capacity available April 1 received market-priced bids from 23 companies, the company said. The facility began commercial operations last August (see Daily GPI, Aug. 22). “We will now begin working with the top bidders to finalize new firm service agreements that will commence next spring with our initial firm service agreements that we entered into after our first open season two years ago,” said Peregrine COO Jeff Foutch.

U.S. steel and iron producer Nucor Corp. last week said it is taking a half-stake in some of Encana Corp.’s U.S. natural gas wells in Colorado to guard against an expected increase in U.S. gas prices.

U.S. steel and iron producer Nucor Corp. on Tuesday said it is taking a half-stake in some of Encana Corp.’s U.S. natural gas wells to guard against an expected increase in U.S. gas prices.

A Pennsylvania judge ruled that the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) had no authority to review local drilling ordinances for compliance with Act 13, a decision that could force the agency to release nearly $1 million in impact fee revenue withheld for noncompliance.