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Anschutz Exploration Corp. has exited the Bakken Shale play after closing the sale of its remaining operated and nonoperated oil and gas producing properties in the Williston Basin, including undeveloped acreage, to an undisclosed Canadian oil company for $115 million. The deal comes less than a year after the company sold 180,000 net acres to Oxy USA in December 2010 for $1.4 billion.

Calling development of the Marcellus Shale play “a great opportunity” for New York, the Public Policy Institute of New York State Inc. (PPI) said a scenario where 500 gas wells were drilled every year in the state would create 62,620 jobs, $2.7 billion in added value and $1 billion in local, state and federal tax revenue.

June’s flood in and around the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota has been a setback for all the producers in the area, but it may not be as devastating as earlier reports indicated, MDU Resources Group Inc. senior executives said Tuesday during a second quarter earnings conference call.

The ongoing expansion of Atlas Pipeline Partners LP’s (APL) Velma system and similar projects on the partnership’s other systems must be completed before it can take on all of the production coming its way, APL said Tuesday.

June’s flood in and around the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota has been a setback for all the producers in the area, but it may not be as devastating as earlier reports indicated (see Daily GPI, June 28), MDU Resources Group Inc. senior executives said Tuesday during a second quarter earnings conference call.

Calling development of the Marcellus Shale play “a great opportunity” for New York, the Public Policy Institute of New York State Inc. (PPI) said a scenario where 500 gas wells were drilled every year in the state would create 62,620 jobs, $2.7 billion in added value and $1 billion in local, state and federal tax revenue.

Statoil Marketing and Trading Inc. (SMT) will supply NOVA Chemicals Corp. with a long-term supply of ethane from the Marcellus Shale play, under the terms of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) announced by the two companies.

Tesoro Corp. said it plans to spend about $50 million on rail facilities to boost Bakken Shale crude oil shipments from North Dakota to its refinery in Anacortes, WA. The San Antonio-based company said it hopes to deliver up to 30,000 b/d after the project’s completion, up from the current rate of 1,000 to 2,000 b/d. The project will include loading and unloading facilities and a unit train. Tesoro estimates construction will take between nine months to a year to complete, once the necessary permits are received.

The fickle nature of weather trends came into play in the gas market again Friday as hot weekend forecasts for much of the U.S. and even extending into parts of central and Eastern Canada generated rallies at a large majority of points. The previous day’s 2.5-cent futures loss following a moderately bearish storage report and the usual weekend decline of industrial load had relatively minimal impact.