Permits

Wednesday afternoon, Dallas City Council voted to deny Trinity East Energy LLC three permits it needed to drill on leases within the city for which it has already paid $19 million, setting the city up for a possible legal challenge from the company that could end up costing it millions before the nearly five-year saga is over.

Both oil and natural gas production in the Lone Star state climbed during June from year-ago levels, and the top producing counties remained the familiar Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale region names, according to Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) data.

City of Dallas officials are inching toward a conclusion to the long-running debate over how large to make the buffer zone around would-be well sites within the city. One proposal could effectively prevent drilling within the city limits, an industry advocate said.

Last year’s 50-year oil production record in Colorado may be broken again this year, according to the latest production statistics from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC). The statistics cover January through May.

State regulators in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia collectively issued 411 permits for oil and gas drilling during the month of July, most of which targeted the Marcellus and Utica shales.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has issued air permits to Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. (CPChem) LP, moving plans for a 3.3 billion pounds/year ethane cracker and two new polyethylene facilities on Texas’ Gulf Coast one step closer to reality, the company said.

Magellan Petroleum Corp. recently received permits from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to drill five wells on its leases at Poplar Dome in Roosevelt County, MT. The permits were the final requirement before the company can begin drilling for its CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) pilot program.

Under a settlement of a pending court case, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in northwestern Colorado has agreed to reevaluate air quality impacts on 34 authorized, but not yet permitted, oil and natural gas drilling projects in the western part of the state.

The Boulder City Council in Colorado on Tuesday night unanimously agreed to impose a one-year moratorium on issuing new drilling permits, and it adopted on first reading a ban to use or sell water for oil and gas extraction.