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The Boulder County, CO, commission on Tuesday formally extended a moratorium on new oil and natural gas drilling permits to June 10. However, the commission left the door open to lifting the ban earlier if the county’s new drilling rules are in place.

The Marcellus and Utica shales aren’t drawing near the attention they have been, according to a review of 4Q2012 mergers and transactions (M&A) in the United States by PwC US.

With Cook Inlet reaching old age as an oil and natural gas basin, concerns are being aired in the Alaska state legislature and elsewhere over the longer term adequacy of supplies to serve Southcentral Alaska, including its largest population center, Anchorage.

A trio of New York legislators opposed to high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) held court over a lengthy public hearing Thursday on rules that would govern the practice, but officials with the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) were not in attendance.

Debt-tarnished Quicksilver Resources Inc. said Thursday it is still in talks to sell a nonoperated minority working interest in its Barnett Shale assets and is negotiating a potential joint venture (JV) in the Horn River Basin in northeast British Columbia. Investors have been awaiting deals on both fronts for some time.

Over New Year’s Eve U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) crews contended with an Arctic storm while assisting Royal Dutch Shell plc’s grounded drillship The Kulluk on the southeast shoreline of Sitkalidak Island, AK. Shell emphasized that the grounding is a maritime accident and not related to drilling, and that there was no risk of an oil spill.

A subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc has been given another six months to decide whether to purchase property in western Pennsylvania for a proposed “world scale” ethane cracker in the heart of the Marcellus Shale.

Over opposition from a consumer groups, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorized a five-year, $150 million joint research effort between a federal research laboratory and three of the state’s major investor-owned utilities. Natural gas operating advancements are one of four focus areas.

A federal district court judge in Colorado has rejected a proposed settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and two independent producers over alleged rigged bidding in a government lease sale, saying the punishment did not fit the crime.