March

PDC Energy wells in the Codell formation of Colorado’s Wattenberg Field are outperforming those in the Niobrara, and the independent plans to drill as many Codell horizontal wells as Niobrara horizontals this year, company officials said during an analyst day conference in New York Thursday.

Fresh off an asset streamlining and an Eaglebine joint venture (JV) formation with EOG Resources Corp. (see Shale Daily, March 26), Houston-based ZaZa Energy Corp. executives are touting their heavy weighting to the emerging stacked South Texas play and said what’s learned from the JV will add value to the company’s 100% owned acreage.

A Harris Interactive poll found that most registered voters in Ohio are opposed to higher severance taxes on oil and natural gas, believing such increases would destroy job creation and harm the economy.

The Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) said Tuesday that it penalized Chesapeake Energy Corp. $765,000 for “knowing or willful submission of inaccurate information” on its oil and natural gas royalty reports.

More than half of the natural gas pipeline projects that entered service were in the Northeast during 2012, a year in which overall U.S. capacity investment slowed.

Oilfield services activity in North America’s onshore and offshore from January through March is lower than Schlumberger Ltd. anticipated, according to CEO Paal Kibsgaard, who spoke Tuesday at the Howard Weil 41st Annual Energy Conference in New Orleans.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed that for the first time, Republican voters in New York State have an unfavorable opinion of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who took office two years ago and who is at the forefront of the debate over hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Water samples taken downstream of facilities authorized to treat wastewater from natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale had elevated concentrations of chloride but not total suspended solids (TSS), although the obverse was true in samples collected downstream of watersheds with shale gas wells drilled on them, according to a report published in the Proceedings of National Academies of Sciences (PNAS).

Equitrans LP is holding a nonbinding open season through March 13 for firm transmission and storage capacity on a system to be known as Allegheny Valley Connector, which would consist of transmission and storage assets that are expected to transfer to EQT Corp. as part of a transaction with Peoples Natural Gas Co. LLC. EQT is the parent of Equitrans through its EQT Midstream Partners LP. The system is in the Marcellus Shale region, and its primary function is to store and transport gas to Peoples interconnects, including gas for use by Peoples and other suppliers. Information is at www.eqtmidstreampartners.com.