Hill

Privately held investment developer Tug Hill Inc. is forming a partnership with equity firm Quantum Energy Partners to acquire and develop conventional and unconventional properties in North America.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Meadhas namedBridget Hillas director of theOffice of State Lands and Investments, which is involved in, among other things, associated wellhead natural gas flaring and coalbed methane leases (seeDaily GPI,June 20, 2012). Hill, who was an attorney for the lands office for six years, replacesRyan Lance, who is moving to the private sector. The office supports the state’s Board of Land Commissioners and the Loan and Investment Board, which are composed of the top five elected officials, including Mead.

Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy Partners LLC is gearing up to test Utica Shale deposits in Guernsey and Harrison counties, a new partner said Tuesday.

Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. plans to hydraulically fracture (frack) and test the shale at its exploration well at Grange Hill in the UK’s Bowland Basin and intends to drill, frack and test gas flows at up to six new temporary well sites in the Borough of Fylde, in Lancashire, England, the company said Friday.

China’s Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp. has added to its considerable leasehold in the Mississippian Lime formation after agreeing to pay Chesapeake Energy Corp. $1.02 billion in cash for half of its 850,000 net acres.

CHS Inc., the nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperative, launched a proposal Wednesday to build a $1.1-1.4 billion nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing plant in North Dakota that would take advantage of natural gas feedstock to provide U.S. and Canadian farmers with enhanced supplies of crop nutrients.

The Town Council of Chapel Hill, NC, has approved a resolution voicing its opposition “absent guaranteed public health and environmental protections” to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) because of potential threats to local water supplies. Creedmoor, NC, and the Town of Cary, NC, have also taken steps to regulate fracking locally (see Shale Daily, Jan. 9). In separate statements, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue and the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources have said they believe fracking can be done safely if it is properly regulated (see Shale Daily, March 26; March 19). The North Carolina Geological Survey believes that technically recoverable gas exists in the state’s Sanford sub-basin (including Lee, Chatham and Moore counties in central North Carolina) and possibly the Dan River sub-basin (including Stokes and Rockingham counties in northern North Carolina).

Small natural gas and oil operators took their complaints about the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to Capitol Hill last Thursday, blaming the agency’s sluggish pace in processing applications for permits to drill (APD) for the slowdown in energy development on public lands..

Small oil and natural gas operators took their complaints about the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to Capitol Hill Thursday, blaming a slowdown of oil and gas activity on public lands on a sluggish approval process for applications for permits to drill (APD).