NYMEX

The pioneering shale gas and oil developers have to be unshackled by “prison guards of the past” to allow the United States to achieve energy independence, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on the closing day of the Shale Insight conference in Philadelphia.

Will anyone be able to look back on this time in the United States and not consider it to be a golden age for natural gas? Will anyone doubt that the Marcellus Shale was the blazing star in that firmament?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is proposing a change to the format of itsWeekly Natural Gas Storage Report(WNGSR), adding an estimate of the implied flow of working natural gas into or out of underground storage facilities to its WNGSR summary table.

The move to horizontal drilling and longer laterals has made the domestic land rig count not so simple anymore, leading Raymond James & Associates Inc. last week to launch well and footage count forecasts.

A U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell plc is throwing in the towel in the Kansas portion of the Mississippian Lime, selling off 45 producing wells and about 600,000 net lease acres. Last week the operator also pulled the plug on an oil shale research center in Colorado.

Summer is over and the shoulder season, where air conditioners have been turned off and heaters have yet to be turned on, has arrived is the message that was sent by natural gas cash prices for the week ending Sept. 27, as a vast majority of individual pricing points across the country declined by 20-plus cents. NGI’s National Spot Gas Average for the week came in at $3.47, down 20 cents from the previous week.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which includes under its regulatory umbrella much of the state’s natural gas and oil industry, needs to open its doors wider to public scrutiny, said acting DEP Secretary E. Christopher Abruzzo.

Total natural gas used for power generation in the United States was down 14% between January and July 2013 compared with the same seven month period in 2012, due primarily to higher gas prices relative to coal prices this year, according to a report issued last week by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

With the topic of water conservation moving into the national and international spotlight, the water usage of North America’s oil and gas shale development boom is being scrutinized as experts examine the issue. Some researchers are quick to point out that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is one of the most water-intensive energy activities; others point out that fracking consumes far less water than power plants do.