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Production has been delayed at Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.’s Stalder pad in Monroe County, OH, due to colder than normal temperatures in the state. Financial analysts had expected initial production (IP) results from the pad’s first Utica well sometime last week (see Shale Daily, Jan. 15). Topeka Capital Markets said in a research note that those results could come as late as Feb. 6. Analysts with the investment bank said the well could come online with an IP rate in the 15-30 MMcf/d range. The well has been closely watched to date, as it’s one of the play’s largest thus far, designed to handle 10 Marcellus and eight Utica wells in the play’s dry-gas window. In December, the company said liquids fallout and delays in the construction of gathering lines caused by cold weather was delaying some production in southeast Ohio and West Virginia (see Shale Daily, Dec. 20, 2013).

Sanchez Energy Corp., which is focused exclusively on the Eagle Ford Shale and the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS), kicked its total production volumes up nine-fold for the fourth quarter, more than seven-fold for the year, and saw gas production increase more than 3,000% in the fourth quarter.

North America’s unconventionals, oilfield services and midstreamers offered nice paybacks to investors last year, according to IHS Inc.

Two of the natural gas industry’s major organizations said Monday they have merged their efforts to promote natural gas vehicles (NGV) into the Washington, DC-based NGVAmerica organization, moving a more recent collaboration known as the “Drive Natural Gas Initiative” into the longer-established advocacy organization headed by industry veteran Richard Kolodziej.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell on Friday introduced legislation to advance the state’s Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, which would commercialize the state’s long-stranded North Slope gas.

David Hochschild has been reappointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the California Energy Commission (CEC) to a full five-year term. Brown had appointed Hochschild last year to fill out a term on the five-member CEC as its environmental representative. Hochschild was a vice president at Solaria Corp. 2007-2013. The appointment requires state Senate confirmation.

FERC said it had requested authorization by Southwest Gas Storage Co. to abandon in place a 1,110-horsepower compressor unit and related equipment at its Waverly Storage Compressor Station in Morgan County, IL (Docket No. CP14-46). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Southwest wants to abandon the unit “because it does not anticipate needing it at its present location for the foreseeable future [and] it has become increasingly expensive to maintain.” FERC said the unit has not been used for over twelve months, and that it would cost Southwest $8.5 million to replicate the compressor unit elsewhere. If no motion to intervene is filed with 60 days the proposal will be deemed authorized.

Spot natural gas prices advanced across the board in Monday’s trading, with Northeast and East points earning double-digit gains as the polar vortex kept temperatures well below normal all along the Eastern Seaboard. Forecasts called for no slowdown until the weekend. Supplies into the Midwest were reduced by a fire at a compressor station bringing gas from Canada, and Midwest spot prices soared to record levels.

The head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said the cartel doesn’t feel threatened by the United States producing ever-increasing volumes of shale oil, and one OPEC member said it was interested in possibly importing natural gas from North America.