Previously

Hoping to more accurately address the cost of development on local communities, a Pennsylvania Senate committee made major changes to a proposed impact fee on Marcellus Shale wells on Tuesday.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season may not be as active as previously predicted, producing only as many tropical storms as the 1995-2010 average (15 named storms, including eight hurricanes, four of them Category Three or greater), but the United States can expect two or three hurricanes to make landfall this year, forecasters at WSI Corp. said Tuesday.

Portland, OR-based NW Natural announced late Tuesday that it has reached an all-parties settlement on a previously announced joint venture to develop natural gas reserves with a U.S. subsidiary of Canadian-based Encana Corp. (see Daily GPI, Feb. 28). The settlement must be approved by the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC), and the parties are seeking an OK by May 1.

In a March 2 letter to Gov. Tom Corbett, a group of 80 Pennsylvania state representatives said they would hold up royalty revenues if the state leased additional forest land for natural gas development.

Having previously announced System Overrun Limitations (SOL) in all market-area zones for last Thursday and then extending them into Friday, Northern Natural Gas said late Thursday the SOLs would remain in place through Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

El Paso, which had previously declared a Strained Operating Condition due to low linepack, late Wednesday issued a drafting-based emergency Critical Operating Condition with a 3% negative imbalance tolerance. “Based on current supply shortfalls caused by extreme cold temperatures and power outages in the production areas…and current demand on the delivery side of the system, [El Paso] does not expect conditions to improve over the next 24 hours,” the pipeline said.

Natural gas drilling in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale already has enriched the state through new jobs and more revenue and is on track to create up to 20,000 jobs by 2015, according to a study by West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER).

Trans Energy Inc. has begun drilling the Lucey #1H well, its seventh horizontal Marcellus Shale well in Marshall County, WV, the company said. The drilling of the Keaton #1H well, which was begun by the independent exploration and production company in November (see Shale Daily, Nov. 23, 2010), has been completed. St. Marys, WV-based Trans Energy said it completed the 11-stage hydraulic fracture (frack) of Stout #2H in Marshall County last week and this week will begin the process of drilling out the frack plugs; fracking is scheduled in March for Keaton #1H and in February for Groves #1H, the company said. Trans Energy is moving to a development phase from an exploration phase as it develops its acreage position in northern West Virginia.

Dozens of countries have launched programs to attempt to emulate the successful exploitation of shale in the United States, but it will take more than copying a formula, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).