Opinion

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon, who Thursday spoke to analysts publicly for the first time in months beyond the Oklahoma City boardroom, said the company remains on track to sell up to $14 billion of assets by the end of the year, including a package of properties in the Permian Basin. He’s also confident that even as the company continues to turn toward more oily production, natural gas prices will strengthen in the coming months.

Two separate polls conducted in New York State have found that public opinion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) hasn’t changed much over the past year.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee last Tuesday disagreed about the significance of declining oil and gas production on federal lands during a hearing on the department’s proposed 2013 budget.

The future of American’s shale industry is bright and the darkest shadows on the horizon are nothing more than black swans — potential problems that involve high impact risks but a low probability of occurring — according to Natural Gas Supply Association of America (NGSA) CEO R. Skip Horvath.

Canada’s natural resources minister said his government is committed to seeing the Keystone XL Pipeline become a reality, and rebuked a possible effort by European officials to target the country’s oilsands by labeling it as a dirtier form of energy.

October natural gas trudged lower Friday as traders see widening differentials auguring further weakness. October fell 6.9 cents to $3.809 and November dropped 5.9 cents to $3.922. October crude oil shed $1.44 to $87.96/bbl.

Arthur Brisbane, who acts as the “readers’ representative,” wrote an opinion piece in the Sunday Times following accusations by critics that the newspaper and reporter Ian Urbina had used “fear mongering” to criticize the industry, comparing it to a “Ponzi” scheme with a future like Enron Corp. or the dot-com bubble (see Shale Daily, June 28). Brisbane researched the methods used by the reporter and editors and followed up with his commentary.

The number of rigs activity exploring for natural gas in the United States declined on Friday for the first time in six weeks, Baker Hughes Inc. reported Friday.

There were further indications recently of a sea change in public attitudes toward offshore drilling when a public opinion poll sample in Massachusetts, a bastion of liberalism and environmentalism, indicated that a majority of state residents favored drilling off their New England coast.