Ramping

Petrohawk Energy Corp. and EXCO Resources Inc. separately on Tuesday reported ramping up two “monster” natural gas wells in the Haynesville Shale in northwestern Louisiana.

With oil and natural gas production ramping back up offshore following Hurricane Ike’s visit last week, energy futures prices were headed lower Tuesday — albeit at much different paces. While October natural gas dropped 1.3%, or 9.5 cents, to $7.279, October crude shaved 4.8%, or $4.56, to close at $91.15/bbl.

Ramping up the photo-ops on oilman T. Boone Pickens’ alternative energy crusade, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson Monday became the first of his colleagues nationally to sign a pledge to join Pickens’ campaign to “break America’s addiction to foreign oil.”

St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. reported solid success from a horizontal well in the Carthage Field of East Texas, in an area that several other producers have found promising, and it plans to continue to add to its acreage in the region, the Denver-based independent said Thursday.

Columbia Gulf Transmission (CGT) was ramping back up on its flow volumes late last week after its Hartsville (TN) Compressor Station was knocked out of action last Tuesday night in a fiery explosion caused by one of a series of tornadoes in the South that killed at least 59 people.

Ramping up oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricanes Rita and Katrina moved at an excruciatingly slow pace last week, with several major producers and pipeline operators still assessing damage to onshore and offshore infrastructure.

Westcoast reported experiencing “some souring issues” at the McMahon Gas Plant. The plant was at zero throughput as of early Friday afternoon but was in the process of ramping operations back up, the pipeline said. Customers were not asked to adjust their McMahon business, but “upstream customers will experience higher pressures as we recover from this event,” it added.

World energy demand will continue to grow, but new oil and natural gas discoveries ramping up across the globe will likely lead to stabilized prices and perhaps even a dip in the long term, the CEO of BP plc said Tuesday.

Chevron Corp. and partner Kerr-McGee Corp. are ramping up development of the Blind Faith field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico using a semisubmersible production facility. The field has an estimated gross resource potential of more than 100 million boe, and initial production is expected to be 30,000 bbl/d of oil and 30 MMcf/d of natural gas.