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FERC has called for a technical conference to address an intermittent reversal of natural gas flow on Texas Eastern Transmission’s (Tetco) system in Ohio caused by the increasing influx of rich Appalachian gas.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s shareholders were cheering last week after the company delivered a solid quarterly earnings report and outlines of a new strategy to live within cash flow, ending its longstanding mode of capturing leasehold to focus on developing only the best plays in the portfolio.

A FERC administrative law judge’s (ALJ) initial decision ordering refunds of pipeline charges wrongfully collected by Rockies Express LLC (REX) pipeline for lost and unaccounted for gas, if endorsed by the full Commission, could disrupt the entire pipeline industry, according to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA).

Natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shales should double over the next five years, surpassing Rockies output levels from 2012 and accounting for “over a quarter of U.S. Lower 48 gas production,” Wood Mackenzie upstream analysts are forecasting.

Given the projected demand in the heavy-duty, long-haul trucking sector, U.S. capacity for producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transportation will need to accelerate rapidly to build up to 90 new small-scale LNG production facilities with a collective capital investment of up to $3.6 billion, a Pace Global consultant said last week.

Demand between now and 2015 will prop up natural gas prices, even with a backlog of drilled wells awaiting connection, and from 2016 to 2018 a “dramatic structural increase” in demand could outpace supply additions and send gas prices to as high as $6.00/MMBtu, BNP Paribas’ Teri Viswanath, director of commodity strategy, said last Friday.

The Texas Petro Index (TPI), an indicator of upstream oil and gas activity in Texas, increased modestly but steadily during the first half of the year, beginning July a scant 1.2% from matching the peak index achieved nearly five years ago, according to data released last week.

Five of the top oil and natural gas producers in the world last week failed to impress with their 2Q2013 earnings reports, with Royal Dutch Shell plc causing the most talk after it wrote off more than $2 billion on the value of some liquids-rich properties in North America.

ew pipeline and compressor infrastructure has helped boost dry gas production in West Virginia and neighboring southern Pennsylvania counties since early 2012 — in the heart of the Marcellus Shale — with more growth still expected to come in the region despite strategic shifts by oil and gas companies to more liquids-rich targets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.