Responsible

Standing in the middle of North Dakota’s booming oil/gas production fields, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday rolled out new federal government efforts to streamline onshore leasing and drilling processes on federal lands. Salazar made the announcement after two days of touring the Bakken Shale area, a major economic driver in what is now the nation’s third largest oil producing state.

Despite allegations that a wastewater disposal well in Youngstown may be responsible for about a dozen minor earthquakes in northeast Ohio over the past year, he oil and gas industry supporters told NGI last week that remain confident that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ (ODNR) decision to temporarily shut down a well will not have an impact on the emerging oil and gas industry in the state’s portions of the Marcellus and Utica shales.

As has been rumored for weeks, French energy giant Total SA is paying $2.32 billion to acquire a one-quarter stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s massive Utica Shale leasehold in Ohio in the second big partnership targeting unconventional oil and gas between the companies.

A well used to dispose of fracking-related fluids in the northeastern corner of Ohio is believed to have been responsible for about a dozen minor earthquakes in the town of Youngstown over the past year, with the latest one coming on New Year’s Eve, according to state regulators.

The Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) is seeking requests for proposals (RFP) for its Small Producer Program and its Unconventional Resources Program.

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 United States is seeing a resurgence in ethylene cracking facilities as chemical companies, which left the country a decade ago because of high natural gas feedstock prices, are returning to build new plants and reopen mothballed facilities due to lower gas prices brought on by the boom in shale production, said the head of the American Gas Association (AGA) Friday.

The shale rocks that are reconfiguring the North American energy landscape eventually will be unearthed around the world, albeit at a much slower pace, but the economic impacts will be gigantic, an ExxonMobil Corp. executive said Tuesday.

Exploration and production companies have heeded the call to improve transparency and institute better practices, but there’s more to do to address the concerns of stakeholders in the shale plays, a Range Resources Corp. executive said last week.