Redistributed

Members of a panel testifying at a hearing of a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs subcommittee last week warned that allowing global conglomerates to own multiple pieces of the production and marketing chain for any commodity, including oil and natural gas, while simultaneously also speculating on the price of those commodities, opens the door to potential manipulation of prices.

After gaining access earlier this year to a big bundle of onshore and offshore opportunities in the United States, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. now is reworking its strategy to relieve the cost burden and increase production, top executives said last week.

Federal regulators, working with Walter Oil & Gas Corp., said Friday they were continuing to oversee and coordinate response efforts to secure the producer’s South Timbalier Block 220 natural gas well in the shallow Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which blew out last Tuesday and ignited a fire later that night.

Spot prices for U.S. natural gas at most major trading points increased on average 40-60% in the first half of 2013 (1H2013) from a year earlier as demand eclipsed supply, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week.

Last year, natural gas-fueled plants accounted for 57% of the generating capacity in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and more than 44% of energy use. As the reliance on gas-fired power grows, ERCOT is working with other organizations to protect against and prepare for a large-scale system-wide blackout.

Goodrich Petroleum Corp. is buying a 66.7% working interest in producing assets and about 277,000 gross acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) for $26.7 million as it continues to build scale in the play and improve its drilling performance.

Robert Douglas Lawler, 46, one of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s top exploration and production (E&P) executives, last week was tapped to be CEO and president of Chesapeake Energy Corp.

The capacity of underground natural gas storage facilities increased by about 2% from November 2011 to November 2012, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a new report. The increase was seen in both demonstrated maximum and design capacities.

A wide variety of outcomes are possible when contemplating the likelihood that an oil or natural gas injection well could increase the chance of seismic activity, including the possibility of not operating the well at all, according to a draft report by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) workgroup.