natural gas prices

PetroQuest Energy Inc. and Midstates Petroleum Co. Inc. have formed a joint venture (JV) to develop Midstates’ oily Fleetwood project in central Louisiana.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could take action against the global asset and investment firm BlackRock Inc. after an investigation into a former employee, Daniel J. Rice III, revealed a potential conflict of interest between the portfolios he managed and his family business, Rice Energy Inc., according to an 8-K filed by the firm Friday.

Given the North American shale boom and global energy and political developments, California can expect continued sharp increases in the amounts of crude oil shipped by rail, top energy officials were told during a daylong California Energy Commission (CEC) workshop in Sacramento.

Tempe, AZ-based Quantum Energy Inc. has plans for five micro-refineries in the Williston Basin in Montana and North Dakota, home to the Bakken shale boom, according to congressional testimony Thursday by the company’s Executive Vice President Russell Smith.

Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP (CPChem) is expanding the normal alpha olefins (NAO) production capacity at its Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, TX. The expansion, which is intended to take advantage of low-cost shale gas supplies, will add 100,000 metric tons per year of capacity and is expected to be completed in July 2015. The project has been permitted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. NAOs and derivatives are used extensively as polyethylene co-monomers, synthetic motor oils, lubricants, automotive additives and in a wide range of specialty applications.

A New Orleans federal appeals court has ruled a former BP plc executive may face charges that he obstructed a Congressional investigation into the Macondo well blowout in 2010.

With the country’s natural gas storage network refilling faster than expected and analysts calling for a mild summer to further tamp down demand for the resource from the power generation sector, Northeast natural gas prices in the forward market have been making their way lower in recent weeks.

Despite poor results and the unabashed early decisions of some unconventional operators to abandon altogether what was once thought to be the core of Ohio’s Utica Shale, neither the oil and gas industry nor the communities waiting for economic opportunity have written off the play’s northern tier.

Physical gas for weekend and Monday delivery fell like a rock in Friday’s trading. Market points across the board were lower, in some cases by deep double digits, with the East and Northeast taking on the brunt of the selling.