Night

The Boulder City Council in Colorado on Tuesday night unanimously agreed to impose a one-year moratorium on issuing new drilling permits, and it adopted on first reading a ban to use or sell water for oil and gas extraction.

Colorado state energy officials Thursday night said a hydrocarbon spill in the Parachute Creek area of the Western Slope was essentially under control and there was no apparent impact on the creek, Todd Hartman, a Colorado Oil Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC) spokesman told NGI.

On a 6-3 vote after dozens of citizens and business representatives spoke, the Colorado Springs, CO, City Council late Tuesday night approved rules to allow the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in oil and natural gas drilling, mirroring similar statewide rules.

“Human error” by a utility employee caused an explosion on the Columbia Gas Co. of Massachusetts system that rocked Springfield, MA, Friday night, damaging 42 homes and businesses and sending 18 people, mostly first responders, to area hospitals, said state Fire Marshall Stephen Coan and the Massachusetts’ Department of Public Utilities (DPU) Sunday. But the head of the company said the worker followed proper procedure.

Erie, CO, officials voted 6-1 Monday night to end a six-month moratorium on new oil and natural gas drilling after securing agreements with producers that place stricter regulations on their operations.

The California Department of Conservation’s Oil/Gas Division goes to the heart of the state’s energy production region in Bakersfield Wednesday night to kick off a series of eight public workshops on hydraulic facturing (fracking) as a data-gathering phase prior to writing draft rules to more precisely regulate the oil/gas drilling process.

Elected officials in a third town in Colorado, Erie, on Wednesday night adopted a six-month moratorium on oil/gas development on an emergency basis, making the halt effective immediately.

Utah is looking for fewer roadblocks from the U.S. government to allow it to achieve its own brand of “energy independence,” Gov. Gary Herbert said Wednesday night in his state of the state address emphasizing his state’s growing economy, which has lowered unemployment to 6%.

President Obama in his annual State of the Union speech Tuesday night, for the first time issued a strong call for development of domestic natural gas and oil as part of “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.”