People

The shale gas and oil revolution has created a 20-year opportunity for technology and sustainable economic development, but to realize its full potential, the people who think about energy will have to adopt a new mindset, Deloitte’s Joseph Stanislaw said in a new whitepaper, in which he argues that shale resources should be a bridge to a lower-carbon future.

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC), providing power for 1.2 million people in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, is negotiating for gas supply for a planned 1,000 MW natural gas-fired baseload plant near the Susquehanna River at the head of Chesapeake Bay.

Researchers from Cleveland State University (CSU) said Ohio counties with significant Marcellus and Utica shale development have seen only a modest increase in job creation in 2012, but those same counties also saw a large increase in retail sales.

Engineering company Curtiss-Wright Corp. said Monday it would pay $135.1 million in cash to acquire Cimarron Energy Inc. to gain entry into the U.S. shale oil and natural gas market.

Braskem America on Wednesday agreed to take over some of the petrochemical operations at the old Sunoco Marcus Hook Industrial Complex south of Philadelphia with a $56 million infusion and another $15 million in state support that preserves more than 100 jobs and creates at least 28 more.

A closed-door meeting held in Utah’s Uintah County earlier this year by officials from three states and industry representatives violated the state’s open meeting law because during the meeting officials mapped out strategies to challenge a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ruling to restrict oil shale development, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

Rangeland Energy LLC’s COLT facility — North Dakota’s largest open-access crude oil marketing terminal, according to the company — has begun serving Bakken and Three Forks shale oil producers, the company said Monday.

A legislative panel in Ohio has cleared four rules proposed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which include new requirements for the permitting and construction of oil and natural gas wells and rules governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Even with the intense media coverage of of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), most people haven’t heard about it or are unfamiliar with the practice, according to a nationwide poll conducted in March by the University of Texas at Austin (UT). Of the one-third familiar with fracking “support outweighed opposition, 48% to 36%.”