Month

Despite dry gas production curtailments and rig lay-downs nationwide, Northeast production will grow by 1 Bcf/d from its current 8.3 Bcf/d by the end of the year as the Marcellus Shale “seems impervious to the unfavorable economics,” Bentek Energy LLC said in its Forward Curve Quarterly.

A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted a man accused of trying to blow up a natural gas pipeline in suburban Dallas last month.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. and the City of Salem, OH, have agreed to sign a three-year nondevelopmental lease, with an option for an additional three years, for 381 combined acres of land owned by the city. Chesapeake agreed to pay a signing bonus of $3,500/acre, plus 20% royalties on gross revenue on any production.

The Carlyle Group LP and Sunoco Inc. on Monday stepped up with an ambitious plan to keep the doors open at the oldest continuously operating refinery on the East Coast. The new venture is eyeing growth from the gassy Marcellus Shale that surrounds the refinery, while the oily Bakken Shale would provide up to 140,000 b/d of low-cost fuel supplies.

Despite earlier promulgations that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can be performed safely, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have legalized the practice and begun the process for its regulation.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Shell Appalachia are investigating a methane gas migration issue first discovered last week in Tioga County, PA.

Technology spawned from shale gas got special notice this month in Pennsylvania, with two innovations taking top honors in a competition geared to maximize the economic return from the Marcellus and Utica shales.

The energy analysts at Raymond James & Associates Inc. spent some time earlier this month at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston and concluded two things: offshore activity in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) continues to improve but in the U.S. onshore, liquids-weighted drilling appears to be slowing down.

Low natural gas prices have stifled activity in the dry window of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, but the play’s natural gas liquids (NGL) and crude windows “are hotbeds of activity,” according to veteran industry observer Rusty Braziel, now principal of RBN Energy.