Might

In the current commodity price environment, the best thing about a natural gas rig might be that it can stop drilling for gas, move somewhere else and start drilling for oil. Put another way in a recent note by analysts at Goldman Sachs: “Where a rig is drilling is a more reliable indicator than its classification as a natural gas or oil rig in predicting if the well drilled will be a natural gas well or an oil well.”

The average natural gas customer’s bill might rise 7% during the upcoming 2012-2013 heating season due to colder weather than last winter, said the American Gas Association (AGA) Thursday.

In the current commodity price environment, the best thing about a natural gas rig might be that it can stop drilling for gas, move somewhere else and start drilling for oil.

The DeWitt County, TX, tax base might be bursting with Eagle Ford Shale dollars, but the South Texas county’s roads are buckling under the weight of trucks and other vehicles in the service of developing the play, a new study has found. And a county judge claims his county and others in the play are being short-changed when it comes to funds for road repair.

Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) regulators are considering plans to sell water to operators to use for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), as well as possibly lease land in portions of the Marcellus and Utica shales.

National Fuel Gas Midstream Corp. (NFG Midstream), a unit of National Fuel Gas Co., said its Trout Run Gathering System in Lycoming County, PA, was recently placed in service and is delivering gas to an interconnect with Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC (Transco). Initial production is from four recently completed wells operated by Seneca Resources Corp., a subsidiary of National Fuel.

Natural gas liquids (NGL) prices have been under pressure for a while, but some might be caught off guard by continuing weakness in the NGL sector, cautioned analysts at Wells Fargo Securities in a note Tuesday.

A majority of states, including many deeply involved in shale development, are not preparing for the ways a changing climate might impact future water supplies, according to a new report from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“The more people think things are going to stay the same, the more surprising it will be when they change,” might be an apt revision of an old proverb for today’s shale gas industry.