Involving

In its first crackdown on fraudulent investment activities involving natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, the Pennsylvania Securities Commission (PSC) on Thursday ordered an Allegheny County firm and its owner to stop selling unregistered securities in the state.

No single factor caused the Macondo well tragedy in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), BP plc said Wednesday. “Rather, a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties led to the explosion and fire which killed 11 people and caused widespread pollution” in the GOM this year.

Expect to see more joint ventures or acquisitions involving Marcellus Shale properties, with both domestic and foreign companies vying to gain a stake in what currently is the most attractive U.S. gas shale play.

Expect to see more joint ventures or acquisitions involving Marcellus Shale properties, with both domestic and foreign companies vying to gain a stake in what currently is the most attractive U.S. gas shale play.

An upstate New York man accused of bilking investors out of $35 million in a Ponzi scheme involving oil and gas exploration in Kentucky and Tennessee is dead from an apparent suicide. Ashvin Zaveri, 71, late last year was charged with 16 counts of money laundering and mail and wire fraud dating back to 2003 (see NGI, Dec. 21, 2009). Zaveri shot himself on a park bench in the Rochester, NY, suburb of Mendon, the Associated Press reported. Zaveri had been expected to plead guilty to tax and fraud charges in September. He faced six to eight years in prison.

An upstate New York man accused of bilking investors out of $35 million in a Ponzi scheme involving oil and natural gas exploration in Kentucky and Tennessee is dead from an apparent suicide.

In a two-part deal involving North American natural gas and electricity assets as one part, along with its little-talked-about retail energy services unit, Sempra Energy should exit its joint venture energy trading business by the end of the third quarter, according to senior company officials.

A Mexican federal district court hearing set for last Wednesday was postponed after the judge in the case removed himself from the proceeding involving Sempra Energy’s North Baja California liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal and a disgruntled adjacent landowner, a San Diego-based Sempra spokesperson told NGI.

A Mexican federal district court hearing set for Wednesday has been postponed after the judge in the case removed himself from the proceeding involving Sempra Energy’s North Baja California liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal and a disgruntled adjacent landowner, a San Diego-based Sempra spokesperson told Daily GPI Monday.