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Natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shales should double over the next five years, surpassing Rockies output levels from 2012 and accounting for “over a quarter of U.S. Lower 48 gas production,” Wood Mackenzie upstream analysts are forecasting.

Given the projected demand in the heavy-duty, long-haul trucking sector, U.S. capacity for producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transportation will need to accelerate rapidly to build up to 90 new small-scale LNG production facilities with a collective capital investment of up to $3.6 billion, a Pace Global consultant said last week.

Demand between now and 2015 will prop up natural gas prices, even with a backlog of drilled wells awaiting connection, and from 2016 to 2018 a “dramatic structural increase” in demand could outpace supply additions and send gas prices to as high as $6.00/MMBtu, BNP Paribas’ Teri Viswanath, director of commodity strategy, said last Friday.

The Texas Petro Index (TPI), an indicator of upstream oil and gas activity in Texas, increased modestly but steadily during the first half of the year, beginning July a scant 1.2% from matching the peak index achieved nearly five years ago, according to data released last week.

Five of the top oil and natural gas producers in the world last week failed to impress with their 2Q2013 earnings reports, with Royal Dutch Shell plc causing the most talk after it wrote off more than $2 billion on the value of some liquids-rich properties in North America.

ew pipeline and compressor infrastructure has helped boost dry gas production in West Virginia and neighboring southern Pennsylvania counties since early 2012 — in the heart of the Marcellus Shale — with more growth still expected to come in the region despite strategic shifts by oil and gas companies to more liquids-rich targets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.

Onshore drilling efficiencies and multi-pad drilling has begun to tell the tale in North America’s onshore unconventionals, with super independents ConocoPhillips, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Apache Corp. all reporting stronger-than-ever production.

Princeton, NJ-basedNRG Energy Inc. said Friday it has begun commercial operations of its repowered 550 MW natural gas-fired combined-cycle generating plant at El Segundo, CA. The El Segundo Energy Center includes fast-start capability, allowing the plant to deliver more than half of its capacity in 10 minutes of start-up time and the balance in less than an hour. The new facility meets the state’s and the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s air quality standards, and it will use 30% less gas per megawatt than the original steam boilers at the site.

Fitch Ratings last week raised its U.S. natural gas price deck because even though there has been a shift to liquids targets by exploration and production (E&P) companies, there are slightly better gas fundamentals.