Human

U.S. onshore horizontal drilling has improved steadily across every category, in part because of improvements in technology, but the “human experience factor” appears to be playing a substantial role as well in moving well times and depth curves to the left, according to an analysis by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).

“Human error” by a utility employee caused an explosion on the Columbia Gas Co. of Massachusetts system that rocked Springfield, MA, Friday night, damaging 42 homes and businesses and sending 18 people, mostly first responders, to area hospitals, said state Fire Marshall Stephen Coan and the Massachusetts’ Department of Public Utilities (DPU) Sunday. But the head of the company said the worker followed proper procedure.

Some of the top energy companies in the country are helping to move the U.S. economy, not through super-human feats but rather as investment heroes, using billions in business spending to create thousands of jobs, according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

The shale natural gas industry is “under siege” by some critics and without the public’s support, access to the massive reserves also could be diminished, an industry executive said Wednesday.

Eight out of nine major national and regional hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) service providers have agreed to submit “timely and complete information” to help the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conduct its study on hydrofracking and its impact on drinking water quality, the EPA said Tuesday. Halliburton, after failing to comply with the agency’s voluntary requests for information, has been subpoenaed.

Philip Clarke Baten, who has been an administrative law judge at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 2005, has been appointed as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) administrative law judge, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said. Baten was in private practice for nearly 23 years before his time at HHS and from 1973 to 1982 served in a number of administrative and analytical positions at Howard University in Washington, DC, where he also earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in political science. Baten graduated from George Mason Law School in Virginia in 1980.

Canadian producers have won an exceptionally hard-fought battle — which escalated into a human rights dispute — in a continuing war to maintain a prime drilling target, “sour” reserves laced with lethal hydrogen-sulphide.

Canadian producers have won an exceptionally hard-fought battle — which escalated into a human rights dispute — in a continuing war to maintain a prime drilling target, “sour” reserves laced with lethal hydrogen-sulphide.

In the midst of untold human, property and ecological devastation in the week-long Southern California inferno, energy infrastructure and utility crews were stretched to the maximum last week. For the energy sector in the statem the brunt of the high winds and irrepressible flames was absorbed by the electricity infrastructure. Natural gas operations were virtually unscathed.