Revenue

The Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) said Tuesday that it penalized Chesapeake Energy Corp. $765,000 for “knowing or willful submission of inaccurate information” on its oil and natural gas royalty reports.

In a reversal not seen for a number of months, North Dakota oil/natural gas officials on Friday reported a decline in month-over-month production for both oil and gas in January, and some of the sour weather conditions attributed to the drop may keep production down well into May, according to Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources (DMR).

Aurora Oil & Gas Ltd. is buying a 100% operated working interest in 2,700 net acres in South Texas in the liquids-rich area of the Eagle Ford Shale for $117.5 million.

A portion of excess funds from a recent Colorado state revenue forecast should be spent to study the impact of oil and gas exploration and development on air quality, according to the Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting (OSPB). In an amended spending request to the state’s Joint Budget Committee, the OSPB asked that $492,776 go to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to conduct the survey, and another $567,000 from the state’s capital construction budget be used to purchase equipment for the survey. Gov. John Hickenlooper also recommended $1.3 million in cash fund spending authority for CDPHE to enter into a collaborative partnership with Colorado State University to begin collecting data for a broader study of the impacts of oil and gas operations on air quality in the state’s northern Front Range (see Shale Daily, Jan. 14).

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) late Monday filed a lawsuit in a county district court seeking to invalidate the city of Longmont’s ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) within its city limits. COGA told the court the resolution essentially is a ban on oil/natural gas drilling.

Facing a “flattening out” of revenue sources in the wake of a scourge of summer wildfires and continued low domestic natural gas prices, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead on Friday submitted a supplemental 2013-14 state budget with a 6% annual reduction in the state’s general fund spending.

The West Virginia Department of Revenue (DOR) has decided not to assign assessed value to oil and natural gas wellpad sites in the state, heeding the advice of a special committee of county assessors that doing so would pose a hardship to farmers who own surface, but not mineral, rights to their land.

Canadian railway CN is testing two mainline diesel-electric locomotives fueled principally by natural gas in revenue service in northern Alberta and is working with technology partners to develop a natural gas railway engine and standardized fueling car, or tender.

Natural gas liquids (NGL) drilling has begun to deteriorate in some U.S. basins, Baker Hughes Inc. CEO Martin Craighead said Friday.