nymex settlement

Although President Obama and the participants in a town hall meeting Friday at Binghamton University in New York devoted most of their discourse to education, energy was mentioned once, with the president acknowledging the rise of natural gas but calling for further investment in alternative energies not derived from fossil fuels.

In the midst of mostly stable U.S. natural gas prices and a steady boom in domestic supplies, natural gas utility hedging programs have come under increasing scrutiny, with regulators and consumer advocates questioning the overall costs of hedging in recent years.

Judging from the tenor and content of the comments that have been filed on the revised hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may have to go back to the drawing board on the draft rule for a third time.

A number of Congressional lawmakers have expressed interest in resolving the issue of which federal agency — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — has jurisdiction in cases involving the manipulation of the futures and physical gas markets, said a Commission spokeswoman.

Nearly all of the workers hired by the natural gas industry for jobs in the Marcellus and Utica shales in 2012 were residents of states in the region, according to a workforce survey conducted by the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC).

The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s energy trading reportedly is looking into whether criminal laws were potentially violated, but neither federal officials nor the company would comment on the reports.

Production of oil and natural gas from private lands has skyrocketed while that from federal lands has waned. At least today, the vast majority of shale acreage lies on state and private lands, the Energy Information Administration’ (EIA) Howard Gruenspecht, deputy administrator, said. It’s coal country that is mostly on the government’s property.

Risk-taker and rule-breaker Aubrey McClendon, who co-founded Chesapeake Energy Corp., appears to be making a comeback in the U.S. exploration and production (E&P) arena, with one of his start-ups buying leaseholds big and small in the Utica Shale, sources toldNGI.

Physical natural gas trading at most points for the week ended Aug. 16 was limited to gains of less than a nickel. Only a handful of points drifted into the loss column, and the biggest gains were limited to the Northeast. Locations in the transportation and infrastructure-challenged Marcellus scored nearly $1 gains, with gas at Transco-Leidy Line rising 86 cents to $2.43 and deliveries on Tennessee Zone 4 Marcellus jumping 86 cents as well to $2.30. Regionally the Northeast led the pack with an advance of 23 cents to $3.19.