October

Pennsylvania state Rep. Jesse White (D-Cecil), who has frequently voiced his opposition to the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law and the potential impacts of gas drilling in the state, sent e-mails to Range Resources Inc. — the largest driller in his home county — asking for campaign contributions and a ride to the 2011 Superbowl on Range’s corporate plane.

A record percentage of New Yorkers now support hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and opposition to the practice fell to a low point in October, according to figures from a Siena College Research Institute poll released Friday.

ZaZa Energy Corp. more than doubled its proved Eagle Ford Shale oil reserves between the end of last year and Sept. 1; however, proved Eagle Ford gas reserves declined by more than half with the dissolution of a joint venture (JV) the company had with Hess Corp.

GreenHunter Water LLC recently began handling water disposal services at its newly completed salt water disposal (SWD) facility near Helena in Karnes County, TX. The facility is composed of new storage tanks and a fully contained offloading platform that features four unloading tractor trailer bays, a 150 hp pumping system and 2,400 bbl of onsite storage. The newly drilled SWD well was completed to the Middle Wilcox formation at a total depth of 7,800 feet. Green Hunter Water is a unit of GreenHunter Energy Inc. “We expect demand for Class II injection capacity in this part of the Eagle Ford Shale play to remain robust due to the increased drilling in the region directly related to the successful drilling efforts by operators in the ‘oil window’ of the Eagle Ford,” said Green Hunter Energy President Jonathan D. Hoopes. “With this new well now online and the facility operational, GreenHunter Water’s total owned disposal capacity has reached 35,000 bbl per day from a total of seven SWD wells located in five states.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has finalized its technical guidance for single source air quality permitting for exploration, extraction and production activities from oil and natural gas operations.

Amy Myers Jaffe is joining the University of California, Davis, in October as executive director of energy and sustainability in a joint appointment to the Graduate School of Management and Institute of Transportation Studies. Jaffe has spent the past 16 years at Houston’s Rice University, where she served as director of the Energy Forum at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Kenneth Medlock, deputy director of the forum, was named the new director. Jaffe said she was drawn by the California university’s “focus on sustainability and the interdisciplinary research and relationships between transportation and energy, and by the opportunity to work near California’s state capital, which is an international pioneer on environmental and public policy issues.”

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is warning Pittsburgh officials that several portions of the city’s drilling ordinance are incompatible with Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Domestic natural gas production will be at an all-time high this year and is expected to break that record for a third consecutive year in 2013, thanks in large part to the nation’s booming shale plays, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short Term Energy Outlook for September.

While natural gas production is booming in Pennsylvania, applications to drill unconventional wells in the state appear to have fallen off a cliff in the last three months while the number of wells spudded has been slowly declining for almost a year, indicating producers in the Marcellus and Utica shales have gotten the gas glut message.