Rates

The city of Corpus Christi, TX, is appealing to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to grant it the right to decide whether to sell water to oil and gas producers for hydraulic fracturing and other purposes in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. One company has approached the city to buy water for industrial purposes, according to Corpus Christi Water Director Gus Gonzalez, as reported by the city’s Caller-Times newspaper. If the TCEQ agrees, the city would be allowed to divert surface water from the Choke Canyon reservoir for mining activities. “If [city] council approves any contract water sales, then all revenues generated will be deposited to the water fund and used to either reduce rates or fund future water supplies,” according to a city document related to the matter.

Following the abrupt departure of Forest Oil Corp. (FST) CEO H. Craig Clark, one analyst that follows the company suggested that his quick exit was related to the company’s failure to strike a joint venture (JV) in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

For Apache Corp., whose drilling operations ramped up in 1955 in the Cushing field of Oklahoma, home is now the sweetest place to be, CEO Steve Farris said Thursday.

FERC on Tuesday issued a certificate for Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Northeast Upgrade Project, which would expand the company’s existing 300 Line system in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to provide an additional 636,000 Dth/d of Marcellus Shale gas to Northeast markets. This comes only months after Tennessee placed into service an initial expansion and upgrade of the 300 Line.

A new completion design doubled initial production (IP) rates from the Marcellus Shale in southwestern Pennsylvania for Range Resources, the Fort Worth, TX-based company said Thursday.

Marketed natural gas production of the top-five producing states — Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Colorado — grew 7.5% last year, but their combined share of U.S. gas output fell slightly to about 65%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

A new completion design doubled initial production (IP) rates from the Marcellus Shale in southwestern Pennsylvania for Range Resources, the Fort Worth, TX-based company said Thursday.

Given the continued weak outlook for U.S. natural gas, explorers with exposure to high rates of return (ROR) in liquids-focused plays, both in the onshore, as well as the shallow waters of Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf, provide the best upside going forward, according to the energy team at Credit Suisse.

Proving that different shale plays have different economics, Southwestern Energy Co. plans to cut spending in the Fayetteville Shale and increase spending in the Marcellus Shale this year, the company said Tuesday.