NYMEX

Dealmaking volumes in the U.S. oil and natural gas industry hit their highest first quarter levels in more than 10 years on activity in the upstream sector and because of heightened foreign interest, PwC US reported Wednesday.

Investors lifted Royal Dutch Shell plc by almost 5% in early trading on Wednesday, despite a 44% plunge in profits and 3% decline in production, in part on the better-than-expected gains in the integrated natural gas segment, the operator’s biggest global focus.

U.S. industrial demand growth for natural gas accelerated faster in 2013 than expected, analysts with Barclays Capital said Tuesday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a final greenhouse gas (GHG) prevention of significant deterioration construction permit to FGE Power for the FGE Texas project near Westbrook, TX, allowing the company to build the 1,620 MW natural-gas fired combined-cycle power plant between Midland and Abilene. In 2010 EPA finalized national GHG regulations, which require that air permits be obtained for projects that would substantially increase GHG emissions. Texas is working to replace the federal implementation plan with its own state program, which would eliminate the need for businesses to seek air permits from EPA. The FGE permit is the 36th such permit EPA has issued in Texas. The agency has proposed an additional five permits and has 19 more in development.

Numerous instances of seismic activity in the vicinity of oil/gas drilling waste injection wells (see Shale Daily,April 17;April 8;March 19) have prompted state regulatory agencies, geologic surveys, the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission (OGCC) and the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) to form a group to study the matter. There are nearly 151,000 Class II underground injection control wells across the country used by the oil and natural gas industry to dispose of produced water or enhance resource recovery, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. Participants in the Induced Seismicity by Injection Work Group will share research and practical experience to equip states with tools to evaluate the potential connection between tremors and injection wells and prepare for dealing with them when they happen. The effort is part of a OGCC-GWPC initiative calledStates First.

NGI spot natural gas prices overall were peppered with losses at eastern points in Tuesday’s trading for Wednesday delivery, but rising prices in the Gulf, California, the Midcontinent and Great Lakes lifted the overall market to a proximate 2-cent gain. Physical gas in the Northeast continues to re-align with the Henry Hub, but buyers in locations such as the Southeast are finding it difficult to parlay that re-alignment to their advantage.

Oil production on North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Indian Reservation has become a significant part of the nation’s second largest oil-producing state, and tribal leaders are touting the reservation’s output as among the top 10 oil producing states in the nation.

More North American land drillers have resumed buying equipment for drilling and fracturing (fracking), in part to secure the state-of-the-art technology and in part because unconventional prospects are chewing up drillbits and pressure pumpers, National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV) CEO Clay Williams said Monday.

Long targeted by conventional drillers in the Appalachian Basin, the Upper Devonian Shale formations have been known for some time to hold a cache of dry natural gas. But new technologies, combined with more than a year of close analysis have shown unconventional operators that those six layers of source rock can’t be overlooked.