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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Wednesday he will continue to take legal action against cities and counties that insist on passing bans on the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

A tanker truck driver was killed after a storage tank at an EQT Corp. natural gas well in West Virginia exploded on Friday morning.

Christopher A. Smith, the Obama administration’s point man on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, shed little light last Monday at a national regulatory commissioners’ meeting on when the Department of Energy (DOE) will begin acting on pending applications for authorization to export natural gas to countries with which the United States does not have free trade agreements (FTA).

Some fourth-graders in New York state agree that they don’t want unconventional drilling using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in their state, but they didn’t arrive at that conclusion because of biased messages in the classroom, said Southwestern Energy CEO Steve Mueller. They just don’t know that “natural gas is a true national treasure.”

Christopher A. Smith, the Obama administration’s point man on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, shed little light Monday at a national regulatory commissioners’ meeting on when the Department of Energy (DOE) will begin acting on pending applications for authorization to export natural gas to countries with which the United States does not have free trade agreements (FTA).

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the state Oil and Gas Commission does not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal of oil or gas well permits issued by the chief of the Division of Mineral Resources, a branch of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

U.S. onshore horizontal drilling has improved steadily across every category, in part because of improvements in technology, but the “human experience factor” appears to be playing a substantial role as well in moving well times and depth curves to the left, according to an analysis by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).

Houston-based eCORP Stimulation Technologies LLC claims to have successfully tested a waterless hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid consisting solely of propane in Frio County, TX, in the Eagle Ford Shale. The test simulated conditions in the shale play at 5,950 feet, the company said.

As they continue to pursue rules on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), California oil/gas officials are not seeing the increase in exploratory activity or permitting as other shale basins around the nation have experienced. Drilling activity is down slightly compared to this time last year, a spokesperson for the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) told NGI’s Shale Daily Wednesday.