July

The Pennsylvania General Assembly has passed a bill that authorizes the state Department of General Services (DGS) to lease state-owned land for oil and natural gas drilling, as well as mining for coal, limestone and collecting coalbed methane.

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity has issued a 60-day notice of intent to file a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for allegedly failing to keep wildlife protected from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas wells on federal lands it manages in the Monterey Shale in central California.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is preparing to host several half-day seminars across the state this fall to educate parties on applying for $20 million in grants toward the purchase of natural gas vehicles (NGV) or the conversion of eligible vehicles to natural gas.

The flood of new natural gas supplies from U.S. shale exploration combined with stagnant demand due to the current U.S. economic woes lead natural gas prices to decline across the country by 38-49% from the first six months of 2011 to the first six months of 2012, according to research done by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

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.

Lower commodity prices weren’t enough to slow business at National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV), which reported a growing backlog of capital equipment orders and increased quarterly earnings compared with 2Q2011.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said it estimates that shale formations in the United States contain 483 Tcf of unproved technically recoverable natural gas and 33.2 billion bbl of unproved technically recoverable tight oil.

North Dakota oil and natural gas production maintained its record pace through the end of May, according to the latest statistics from state Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms. Oil and gas production both hit all-time highs again in May.

Monday (July 16) saw the world’s first cleared liquefied natural gas (LNG) swap traded. The contract settles on the ICIS East Asia Index (EAX) for physical LNG. The deal was done for September at $13.90/MMBtu and brokered by Tradition over the CME Direct trading platform and has been cleared by CME Europe.