ngi

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is not the culprit in methane emissions, but other parts of the drilling process are, and they are fixable, according to a panel of industry, academic and environmental representatives.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. still has a way to go before it reaches optimal flying altitude, but CEO Doug Lawler has set the management team on a course designed to strip the portfolio to those that perform the best, which means more assets likely will be sold into 2014.

An interim state legislative task force in Wyoming has directed staff to compile a report for two committees assessing the prospects for the state attempting to take back federally managed public lands, possibly following a tack Utah took last year. Any federal-to-state transfer of land control would be applauded by the oil and natural gas industry as drilling permits historically have taken exponentially longer to receive from the federal government.

Encana Corp., in stress mode since natural gas prices collapsed in 2009, will spend 75% of 2014 capital on only five North American onshore plays, all oily and liquids-rich, a strategy that within four years is designed to create a more evenly balanced operator.

Marathon Oil Corp. continued to raise its game in the Eagle Ford Shale during the third quarter, improving drilling times by 20% from a year ago and bringing drilling and completion costs down by 20%. The company still plans to exit the year with net production of about 100,000 boe/d from the South Texas play.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA) will study radioactive materials produced from shale development activities, with the results intended to complement a similar study being performed by state regulators, the groups said.

Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner (CFTC) Bart Chilton, a major proponent of speculative position limits, announced that Tuesday’s meeting will be his last at the agency.

Just days after withdrawing its appeal of a federal court decision that tossed a controversial final rule aimed at limiting speculative trading in the swaps markets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Tuesday voted to propose new rules in place of the discarded position limits rule.

Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) has asked FERC to initiate a pre-filing review of the expansion of its system in Alabama to provide approximately 1.13 Bcf/d of natural gas to meet growing power generation demand in Florida.