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While it let go of acreage in the Arkoma and Piceance basins last year, production from Antero Resources’ booming Marcellus Shale activities more than made up for their absence in the company’s portfolio of producing assets.

As a formal set of proposed rules on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) moves through preliminary public review in California, Gov. Jerry Brown last Wednesday expressed confidence that his state’s oil and gas regulators would apply “science and common sense” to frack regulations.

Located three counties due north of the wet gas window of the Marcellus Shale, and over a state line from expanding development in the Utica Shale, Mercer County, PA, nevertheless appears poised to benefit from development of both plays in the near future.

House Republicans last Tuesday called for greater access to oil and natural gas resources on public lands, restrictions on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority over the energy industry and for Congress to revisit flawed financial reform regulations in the Dodd-Frank law.

Following a judge’s decision in favor of TPG-Axon Capital, SandRidge Energy Inc. last week cleared the way for shareholders to consider a slate of candidates proposed by the hedge fund to replace SandRidge’s entire board of directors.

President Obama last week gave his official nod to nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz as nominee for secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), and to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air pollution official Gina McCarthy to head up the EPA.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) sent a letter last Wednesday to FERC asking that it provide more detailed information about the Section 5 complaint investigations that were initiated in past years into allegations that certain interstate gas pipelines were charging unjust and unreasonable rates.

North American oil and natural gas producers are in the “middle to latter stages of the land grab” for unconventional properties, but there still will be opportunities down the road for others to pitch a claim, said Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Inc.’s (TPH) Bobby Tudor.

The chief of General Motors (GM) last week urged President Obama to appoint a blue ribbon committee whose only goal would be to develop a 30-year energy policy plan for the United States.