Refused

Cash prices overall averaged a 7-cent gain in Wednesday’s trading as punishing cold refused to release its grip on Midwest and eastern energy markets. If oversized gains in New England are omitted, however, the increase falls to just above 3 cents.

A county judge in Pennsylvania has refused to remove himself from presiding over a lawsuit filed by Range Resources Corp., stating that he can remain objective in the case despite his wife’s activities with an environmental group opposed to hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) has refused to let TransCanada Corp. grab an early lead in building new pipelines for shale gas in northern British Columbia (BC) by rejecting immediate construction of a jumbo link to the main drilling target, the Horn River Basin.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has refused to reconsider its decision to throw out a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest. Judge Jane Richards Roth denied a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc that was requested by the Sierra Club, the Allegheny Defense Project (ADF) and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, which are appellants in the case Minard Run Oil Company v. United States Forest Service et al. (Case No. 1-09-CV-125, Appeals Docket No. 10-2332). Last September the appeals court’s three-judge panel ruled that the U.S. Forest Service could not refuse to give operators permission to drill in the forest while an environmental impact study was being conducted (see NGI, Sept. 26, 2011).

A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its decision to throw out a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest.

A nonbinding “free vote” to support responsible gas development in the emerging Frederick Brook Shale in New Brunswick passed the Legislative Assembly along party lines Tuesday (Dec. 12), erasing fears that support for shale gas could be cracking among the governing Progressive Conservatives.

The leader of the political party that currently represents the opposition in New Brunswick is calling on the government to form a bipartisan committee on shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the emerging Frederick Brook Shale.

A nonprofit environmental group recommends British Columbia keep a close eye on the shale gas industry, warning that expanding development in the Montney and Horn River shale plays could hamper the province’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and put stress on water sources.

An initiative to tax the horizontal segments of natural gas wells was stopped in its tracks by Louisiana House and Senate committees Monday when lawmakers refused to go along with the idea promoted by the Louisiana Tax Commission.