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The mayor of Dallas has directed city council to form a Gas Drilling Task Force and appointed a former council member to lead the body.

New Jersey wants the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to ultimately oversee the approval process for natural gas well sites in the river basin, and is calling for a strict limit to the initial number of production wells to be drilled once it adopts regulations on hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking).

California Gov. Jerry Brown has filled the five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) with his third appointment, Mark Ferron, 52, a senior partner at Silicon Valley Social Ventures, and a former investment banker in London with Deutsche Bank’s global markets division (2001-2009). He also worked as an executive with Salomon Brothers and Bank of America earlier in his financial industry career. Ferron hold a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. He joins CPUC President Michael Peevey, and Commissioners Timothy Alan Simon, Michael Florio and Catherine Sandoval on the CPUC. The latter two were appointed by Brown earlier this year.

A Pennsylvania state lawmaker wants to form a cooperative so that local municipalities can share ideas and resources as they manage development of the Marcellus Shale.

The Louisiana congressional delegation led by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has called on President Obama to put an end to the de facto moratorium in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who waged a successful campaign last fall to serve another term in the Senate, has been confirmed as the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Resources Committee by the panel’s Republican members. The selection was ratified by the full Senate Republican Caucus at a luncheon Tuesday.

The 32-member Congressional Natural Gas Caucus last Wednesday called on Congress to back off from imposing any new hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) regulations on producers until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completes its study on the risks of hydrofracking to public health and water quality.

Bart Chilton, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), last Tuesday expressed his reluctance to support the agency’s proposal to establish position limits in the swaps market. He instead recommended that the CFTC institute an “interim position ‘points’ system.”

The 32-member Congressional Natural Gas Caucus Wednesday called on Congress to back off from imposing any new hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) regulations on producers until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completes its study on the risks of hydrofracking to public health and water quality.