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With the wave of new shale gas supplies flooding the U.S. market and pushing prices to nearly 10-year lows, the natural gas industry is actively searching out new markets and customers to increase demand, panelists told an audience at the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association’s Winter Meeting in Champion, PA, on Tuesday.

The natural gas market may be in a “dire state,” but Tulsa-based contract driller Helmerich & Payne Inc. is poised to benefit as customers migrate to oil and liquids-rich shale plays where its high-performance AC-drive rigs are well suited to the more complicated work, CEO Hans Helmerich said Tuesday.

The LaSalle Pipeline — DCP Midstream LP’s project to transport natural gas from the Niobrara Shale in the Denver-Julesburg Basin to markets in Colorado and neighboring areas — has been issued a favorable environmental assessment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. DCP proposes to construct and operate 11.3 miles of 12-inch diameter gas pipeline from its newly constructed LaSalle Gas Plant in Weld County to a proposed interconnect with the Colorado Interstate pipeline. The line would carry up to 230 MMcf/d. The company expects to begin construction on the project by November for completion by March 2013.

North Dakota’s oil/natural gas boom continues to be a mixed blessing for state energy planners, and future pipeline infrastructure’s adequacy is one of many questions state officials hope to have some answers for by mid-year. A study is under way by the state Pipeline Authority to determine if existing infrastructure will be adequate.

Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) California Gas Transmission system issued a Cold Weather Alert Tuesday, saying the current forecast called for many areas to be at or beyond its Cold Winter Day (CWD) conditions, including the cities of Santa Rosa, Redding and Sacramento. CWD is a design day criteria used to ensure reliable gas service for core and noncore customers, PG&E said. The CWD design temperature is defined as the coldest temperature that may be exceeded once in every two years, on average. The system-weighted mean temperature for a CWD is about 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Lows for the valley areas in PG&E service territory were expected to be in the upper 20s and low 30s Monday morning, and upper 20s on Tuesday morning. No local curtailments are expected, PG&E said.

Noting that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has revolutionized U.S. energy production, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper Thursday boasted that his state’s rules for regulating the use of fracking are the “strongest and fairest” in the nation. Hickenlooper made the remarks as part of his state of the state address in Denver.

Current weather didn’t seem cold enough to justify the substantive gains realized Tuesday at nearly all points as many — but not all — traders returned to their offices from the Christmas holiday weekend. They may have been stocking up a bit in looking forward to the first week of January, when some predict a boost in heating load from the return of cold weather.

Encana Corp. has gone on the offense against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) findings regarding its Pavillion, WY wells, claiming that many of the EPA’s findings from its recent deep monitoring wells, including those related to any potential connection between fracking and Pavillion groundwater quality, “are conjecture, not factual, and only serve to trigger undue alarm.”

For the second time in as many months analysts at Raymond James & Associates Inc. cut their 2012 natural gas price forecast, this time by 12.5% to $3.50/Mcf from $4.00/Mcf. “…[Y]ou all know the story — an unrelenting supply glut…” they said in a note Monday.