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Aurora Oil & Gas Ltd. is buying a 100% operated working interest in 2,700 net acres in South Texas in the liquids-rich area of the Eagle Ford Shale for $117.5 million.

The Eagle Ford Shale continued to drive results for Houston-based Rosetta Resources Inc. last year, leading the company to record production, reserves and cash flow.

Well permitting in Texas during January was up sharply from a year ago, as were well completions. December crude oil production was also up sharply compared with a year ago, but natural gas production slipped, according to the latest figures from the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC).

In the first paragraph of a story published Feb. 26, “EIA: Gas Production Increase Continued Through November” (see Daily GPI, Feb. 26), the trend of natural gas production in the United States last year was incorrectly stated. The first paragraph should read: Production continued its steady increase through November, totaling 27.22 Tcf for the first 11 months of 2012, compared with 25.94 Tcf during the same period in 2011 and 24.42 Tcf in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Energy Review for February. NGI regrets the error.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last Thursday filed an enforcement action charging New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Nymex), a unit of CME Group, and two former CME Nymex employees, William Byrnes and Christopher Curtin, with violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations through the repeated disclosures of nonpublic material customer information over a two-and-a-half-year period to an outside commodity broker. CME Group fired back that not only did it address and handle the issue appropriately, the complaint against Nymex is “neither justified as a matter of law nor consistent with the regulatory structure” established by the CEA.

State of New Mexico officials, Albuquerque-based utility PNM and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last Friday reached a tentative agreement on an emission reductions plan that would shutter two coal-fired generation units and create new natural gas-fired generation.

ExxonMobil Corp. and Russia’s state-owned OAO Rosneft last week agreed to expand a 2011 strategic cooperation agreement for exploration and development, and Rosneft was offered an option to a big stake in the Point Thomson, AK, natural gas and condensate project.

California regulators last week took action that longer term could lower natural gas demand in a state with a 5 Bcf/d appetite by approving a less gas-dependent long-term plan for Southern California Edison Co.’s (SCE) future sources of electricity and launching a rulemaking to examine how to integrate biomethane into the state’s extensive gas pipeline grid.

Natural gas infrastructure “presents significant opportunities” in the long-term, but not so much today, TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling said last week.