Really

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Tuesday the number of drilling rigs active in the Utica Shale during the last week of October had more than doubled compared with the same week in 2011, with an increase in rigs targeting oil more than offsetting the loss of natural gas rigs.

When it goes into effect next month, Ohio’s SB 315 will bring regulatory change to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and four other state agencies, but that’s just the beginning of the changes the oil and gas industry can expect from the legislation, according to Craig Kasper, CEO of project development and engineering company Hull & Associates Inc.

Added gas processing capacity bringing the state’s total to 1 Bcf/d is expected to cut volumes being flared significantly. Currently 34% of North Dakota’s average daily gas production is being flared, but that is slated to change a lot over the course of 2012, according to Industrial Commission spokesperson Alison Ritter.

Riding the Bakken shale rush, North Dakota appears in a good position to jump up to the second biggest oil producing state in the nation behind only Texas. If the upper Midwest state achieves that status next year as expected, it would leapfrog over both Alaska and California, something that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

After much promise but little action, the area of the Niobrara Shale play extending into southeast Wyoming has energy stakeholders in that state scratching their heads. The prospect of more seismic testing has at least one high-level state official encouraged.

Noble Energy Inc. CEO Chuck Davidson said he was “really pleased” with the company’s growth in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin, and said Noble was moving forward with deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) after receiving the industry’s first permit to resume post-moratorium drilling there (see NGI, March 7).

Noble Energy Inc. CEO Chuck Davidson said he was “really pleased” with the company’s growth in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin, and said Noble was moving forward with deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) after receiving the industry’s first permit to resume post-moratorium drilling there (see Daily GPI, March 1).

Noble Energy Inc. CEO Chuck Davidson said he was “really pleased” with the company’s growth in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

While there are a number of options, including electric power for light-duty vehicles, there is really only one viable option to replacing diesel fuel in heavy-duty fleet vehicles such as buses, trucks and construction equipment, and that is natural gas, Rich Kolodziej, president of NGVAmerica, told Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI).