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The value of fugitive natural gas and condensate air emissions in the Barnett Shale of North Texas is about $52 million a year, according to research paid for by a clean air group, which asserts that “simple air pollution control devices” would capture this lost revenue if they were installed in the nine-county nonattainment area around Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW).

Michigan regulators on Wednesday announced a new series of regulations that will impact the future operations of oil and gas drillers using hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) to stimulate production.

A decision to spin off its exploration and production (E&P) unit as a pure-play producer will give Williams shareholders more opportunities to target their investments, CEO Alan Armstrong said last week.

Breakeven shale play economics in a low-gas price environment have driven a migration to liquids-rich and oil plays. “Being in liquids is not only cool; it’s profitable,” an investment banker said in Houston last week. “You can produce gas even if you don’t make money on the gas because the liquids are worth so much more.” But maybe now is the time to be a contrarian, she suggested.

A decision to spin off its exploration and production (E&P) unit as a pure-play producer will give Williams shareholders more opportunities to target their investments, CEO Alan Armstrong said Thursday.

Breakeven shale play economics in a low-gas price environment have driven a migration to liquids-rich and oil plays. “Being in liquids is not only cool; it’s profitable,” an investment banker said in Houston Tuesday. “You can produce gas even if you don’t make money on the gas because the liquids are worth so much more.” But maybe now is the time to be a contrarian, she suggested.

Natural gas experts said last week they believe the Marcellus Shale play can be developed in a way that benefits both industry and area residents, but they voiced concern about possible federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that they said could be based on situations unique to the Marcellus.

Natural gas experts say they believe the Marcellus Shale play can be developed in a way that benefits both industry and area residents, but they voiced concern about possible federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that they said could be based on situations unique to Marcellus.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, President Obama last Tuesday acknowledged that natural gas will play a critical role in the nation’s energy portfolio going forward. “We have a lot of natural gas here in this county,” he said at a town hall meeting in Annandale, VA. He acknowledged the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of the nation’s prolific shale natural gas supply, although he did not mention the practice by name. In late March, Obama championed natural gas as a new source of energy (see NGI, April 4). “The problem is…extracting it [shale gas] from the ground. The technologies aren’t as developed as we’d like and so there are some concerns that it might create pollution in our groundwater, for example. So we’ve got to make sure that if we’re going to do it [fracking], we do it in a way that doesn’t poison people,” Obama said.