Later

A handful of speakers showed up Wednesday at a Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) hearing to comment on a rule for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid disclosure that the RRC is working to enact by the end of the year. Nearly everyone expressed support for the proposed rule and the commissioners’ work.

The Utica Shale could be worth $500 billion, and the “biggest thing economically to hit Ohio, since maybe the plow,” Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon told an audience in Ohio on Wednesday.

After much promise but little action, the area of the Niobrara Shale play extending into southeast Wyoming has energy stakeholders in that state scratching their heads. The prospect of more seismic testing has at least one high-level state official encouraged.

Draft rules to be issued later this week by Canadian officials would set a performance standard for coal-fired plants based on emissions levels from high-efficiency natural gas generation.

Driven by record natural gas output from core holdings in the Pinedale Anticline of Wyoming and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, Ultra Petroleum Corp. on Wednesday reported quarterly profit numbers that beat Wall Street’s expectations. The Houston producer also disclosed that it established a third core area, almost 100,000 net acres in the liquids-prone Niobrara formation of the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin of Colorado.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. is backing out of the Rockies to focus on Appalachia and the Midcontinent.

As it prepares to begin commercial operations later this month, El Paso Corp.’s Ruby Pipeline holds a narrow initial market in the West centered on Northern California. Markets in the Pacific Northwest and Southern California remain virtually untapped, according to sources in those regions.

Shell Oil Co. last week launched a public relations campaign to showcase its onshore natural gas drilling efforts, followed a day later by ExxonMobil Corp., which on Thursday unveiled a website to “give context to the growth of natural gas resources in the United States.”

Devon Energy Corp. will drill more wells in North America’s onshore this year than it originally planned, with an eye on discovering another emerging play, company executives said Tuesday.