Removed

With only one day to go before the Colorado General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn, the energy industry and Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, have quashed nearly all proposed legislation to revise state oil and gas regulations.

The overall physical natural gas market Tuesday on average gained 12 cents, but if super-sized gains scored at Northeast points are removed from the tally, the overall gain was a more modest 7 cents. Gains, nonetheless, were widespread and only a couple of locations didn’t make it to the positive side of the trading ledger. At the close of futures trading, March had fallen 4.9 cents to $3.230 and April was off 5.0 cents to $3.296. March crude oil added 48 cents to $97.51/bbl.

Physical natural gas prices Friday rose an average 79 cents to $4.92, but if the highly volatile and constrained New England points are removed from the figures, the average was a loss of 2 cents to $3.58.

A Chesapeake Energy Corp. subsidiary on Friday was fined $600,000 and placed on probation for two years after pleading guilty in federal court to violating the Clean Water Act (CWA) in order to build a roadway to a natural gas drilling site in northern West Virginia.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the nation set new records for natural gas gross withdrawals, onshore production and the number of producing wells, figures that were boosted in part by shale gas development. Records were also set in domestic consumption, exports and dry and marketed production.

Even if all drilling rigs were removed from the northern Marcellus Shale region and current drilling ceased, dry gas production in northeastern Pennsylvania would continue growing for 16 months, thanks to a large inventory of nonproducing wells and high initial production (IP) rates, Bentek Energy LLC said in a market note. “In fact, if zero rigs were operating there, production could still grow from approximately 4.1 Bcf/d today to 5.4 Bcf/d by September 2013, a 31% increase that results exclusively from working off the existing backlog of 1,000 nonproducing wells in the region,” the firm said. The assumptions in its analysis are that the 12-month average completion rate is carried forward and the average IP rate in the area is 6,500 Mcf/d. A “typical” Marcellus decline curve is also assumed. Potential pipeline capacity constraints were not included in the analysis.

Rockies Express Pipeline LLC (REX) has asked FERC to reconsider a recent order that removed restrictions so that customers of a new mainline displacement-only backhaul service may use secondary points to make forward-hauls.

Rockies Express Pipeline LLC (REX) has asked FERC to reconsider a recent order that removed restrictions so that customers of a new mainline displacement-only backhaul service may use secondary points to make forward-hauls.

A Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) hearing intended to get to the bottom of the matter of whether the Barnett Shale gas drilling activities of Range Resources Corp. led to the contamination of two water wells in Parker County, TX, has been postponed to Jan. 18 from Monday (Jan. 10). In the meantime, one interested observer told Shale Daily that both research that condemns the company and other findings that would exonerate it are incomplete.