Revenue

EXCO Resources Inc. saw record net production volumes during 3Q2011, helped in large part by strong results in the Haynesville/Bossier shale play in Louisiana and Texas and growing momentum in the Marcellus Shale, where it is seeking additional acreage.

Despite low natural gas prices, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP saw 3Q2011 revenue gains as the company continues to implement its 2Q2011 plans for growth through pipeline and storage expansions.

More than 35,000 manufacturing jobs could be created in Louisiana thanks to affordable supplies of natural gas from shale plays, American Chemistry Council (ACC) CEO Cal Dooley said.

After expressing initial reservations, a group representing county governments in Pennsylvania is now supporting a county-level impact fee proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett.

Williams could delay the spinoff of its exploration and production (E&P) business, but the company remains committed to separating the upstream unit from its expanding midstream operations, CEO Alan Armstrong said on Wednesday.

By 2020 exploration and development across the Marcellus Shale could generate more than $6 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue and employ up to 300,000 people across the region, according to Chevron Corp. CEO John Watson.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) lost a bid to collect close to $4 million from the estate of former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and his wife Linda. Kenneth Lay, 64, died of a heart attack in July 2006, six weeks after he was convicted on 10 fraud and conspiracy counts (see Daily GPI, July 6, 2006; May 26, 2006). The tax case dated to Sept. 21, 2001, when the Lays sold $10 million in annuities to Enron as part of an agreement for Kenneth Lay to retake the CEO position, which had been vacated by Jeffrey Skilling a month earlier. The agreement with Enron at the time stipulated that the annuities would be returned to Lay if he worked a 4.25-year term. However, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection less than three months later (see Daily GPI, June 21; May 3, 2006). The IRS contested the Lays’ contention in their 2006 tax filing that the annuities were sold to Enron for no monetary gain; in 2009 the IRS filed a notice of tax deficiency for $3.9 million. U.S. Tax Court Judge Joseph Goeke disagreed, ruling that the Lays’ transactions were legitimate and neither of the Lays nor the estate received any distributions or death benefit from the annuity.

Houston-based Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP has been able to strengthen the value of its natural gas pipeline network by expanding and extending it into North American shale basins over the past few years, but the recent overabundance of gas has resulted in “lower natural gas prices and a reduction in price differentials, both seasonally and between basins,” according to CEO Stanley Horton.

New Brunswick officials said Thursday that while the province was enacting tougher natural gas regulations in the emerging Frederick Brook Shale, it would not implement a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).