Included

Cash prices overall fell an average 15 cents Friday, but if the weather and constraint driven mega-downmoves by eastern and northeast points are included, the average overall decline would have been $1.83. Weather forecasts called for a warming trend by Monday and constraints on a major pipeline were lifted.

Encore Energy Inc., acting in its capacity as lease advisor to mineral rights owners in eastern Ohio’s portion of the Utica Shale, announced Wednesday that it was currently shopping multiple tracts of “add-on” acreage to operators in the play.

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.’s Bakken Hunter LLC is buying existing wells and about 20,000 net Williston Basin lease acres in Divide County, ND, from Samson Resources Co. for $30 million in cash.

Gulfport Energy Corp. has spud some of the largest producing wells in the Utica Shale to date, and the play continues to be the Oklahoma City-based operator’s “primary focus area,” according to CEO James Palm.

Marathon Oil Corp.’s third quarter profits jumped 11% year/year on strong revenue growth and increased production, especially from the Eagle Ford Shale.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and unconventional drilling pioneer George Mitchell last week offered their unqualified support and a big financial boost for “common sense” hydraulic fracturing (fracking) regulations, just days ahead of expected new guidelines for New York state drillers.

The climax of a three-day “Stop the Frack Attack” anti-hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday had been advertised by its organizers as an event that would bring “thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the globe” to protest the practice.

Even if all drilling rigs were removed from the northern Marcellus Shale region and current drilling ceased, dry gas production in northeastern Pennsylvania would continue growing for 16 months, thanks to a large inventory of nonproducing wells and high initial production (IP) rates, Bentek Energy LLC said in a market note. “In fact, if zero rigs were operating there, production could still grow from approximately 4.1 Bcf/d today to 5.4 Bcf/d by September 2013, a 31% increase that results exclusively from working off the existing backlog of 1,000 nonproducing wells in the region,” the firm said. The assumptions in its analysis are that the 12-month average completion rate is carried forward and the average IP rate in the area is 6,500 Mcf/d. A “typical” Marcellus decline curve is also assumed. Potential pipeline capacity constraints were not included in the analysis.

A new investor presentation posted early Tuesday by Chesapeake Energy Corp. included a full-page statement by the company with the headline, “It’s been a tough five weeks, but better days ahead.” By Tuesday afternoon, the statement, originally the second page of the 32-page presentation, had been deleted with no explanation by the company.