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Economic benefits from Colorado’s upstream and midstream oil and natural gas industry totaled $126 billion between 2008 and 2012, according to a study highlighted Thursday by the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.

California oil/natural gas regulators on Thursday issued yet another set of draft well stimulation rules, including for hydraulic fracturing (fracking), making further refinements based on nearly 200,000 comments that have been accumulated in the past 10 months. One change has raised the proposed threshold level for seismic activity tied to well stimulation to 2.7 from a previously proposed level of 2.0.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has rejected a ruling by two administrative law judges (ALJ) that it should dismiss a petition by Sunoco Logistics Partners LP to be a public utility for the Mariner East pipeline. The PUC ordered more public hearings on the issue.

Mike Florio, one of California’s five top energy regulators, made an unprecedented public apology Thursday for his role in recently divulged private e-mail communications between himself and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) concerning a pending regulatory case (see Daily GPI, Sept. 16).

The Marcellus Shale Coalition’s (MSC) annual conference in Pittsburgh was underscored with warnings and apprehension about a battle for public opinion between the oil and natural gas industry and those opposed to it.

Sunoco Logistics Partners LP is pushing back against two administrative law judges (ALJ) who recommended in July that the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) not grant the company public utility status for its Mariner East pipeline.

Sunoco Logistics Partners LP has been dealt an early setback in a bid to earn the status of a public utility corporation, which would exempt its Mariner East pipeline from local zoning ordinances.

A judge in Pennsylvania said he will wait until after the state budget is enacted before considering an environmental group’s request to halt oil and natural gas leasing under state parks and forests.

After completing 8,900 horizontal hydraulically fractured wells since the end of 2007, Alberta industry leaders are searching for a community-relations formula that will be as effective as the drilling technology.