News

Decades of oil and gas drilling, and the jobs and benefits it provides, are engrained in Texas culture, and it’s a way of life that Pennsylvanians now are attempting to assimilate, but residents of both states continue to reconcile the advent of shale gas drilling, according to a survey of 1,600 adults.

The oil major wants to recover some of the millions set aside for Gulf Coast businesses following the 2010 oil spill because it says some claims may have been inflated or the losses were nonexistent.

Colorado regulators and exploration and production companies (E&P) are working together to advance a new groundwater monitoring program that would monitor data at existing drilling sites and drinking water wells in one of the most heavily drilled areas of the state, Weld County.

Cyber attacks on the oil and gas industry ranging from espionage by foreign intelligence services to attempts to interrupt a company’s physical operations are posing “an increasingly challenging problem for U.S. national security and economic competitiveness,” according to a new study by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) did not act illegally in promulgating Dodd-Frank regulations. The Investment Company Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce brought the action against the CFTC, arguing that the adopted regulations applying to derivatives trading were unlawfully adopted and invalid. The district court “granted summary judgment in favor of the Commission. Because we agree with the district court that the Commission did not act unlawfully in promulgating the regulations, we affirm,” ruled the appeals court. Specifically, the two groups challenged a rule that would subject registered investment companies (RIC) engaged in derivatives trading to many of the Dodd-Frank requirements. Prior to 2003, RICs engaged in rare derivatives trading activities, but that has since changed, according to the CFTC. It is the agency’s latest legal victory with respect to its Dodd-Frank regulation of the $300 trillion.

President Obama has tapped former Colorado regulator Ron Binz to sit on the five-member FERC, succeeding Jon Wellinghoff.

Given current commodity prices, natural gas wells drilled in the Marcellus Shale — wet or dry — compete favorably with marginal Bakken Shale oil wells, but that’s the only gas play in the U.S. onshore that today can compete with Bakken oil well economics, according to an analysis by Barclays Capital.

The revival of the U.S. industrial sector will be “the most significant driver” to higher long-term natural gas prices, lifted by new ethylene crackers, ammonia plants and natural gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities fed by stores of natural gas, according to an analysis by Raymond James & Associates Inc.

Cash natural gas prices Friday for Monday delivery followed the lead of Thursday’s futures and fell 16 cents on average. Almost all points fell into the loss column, and only a few market points escaped double-digit losses.