Rights

A bill that would ban permits for underground activities near salt domes, caverns or sink holes where moderate or catastrophic disasters have occurred in the past is advancing in the Louisiana State Legislature, despite opposition from the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA).

Energen Corp. management said the first quarter of 2013 was “both encouraging and challenging” as test wells in the Third Bone Spring and Wolfberry formations of the Permian Basin performed well, but cold weather and interference issues worked against the company as profits fell slightly.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended the deadline from April 30 until Nov. 15 for the public to submit data and scientific literature as part of the agency’s study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on drinking water sources.

A bill that would ban permits for underground activities near salt domes, caverns or sink holes where moderate or catastrophic disasters have occurred in the past is advancing in the Louisiana State Legislature, despite opposition from the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA).

The Bakken Shale and Three Forks formation in the Williston Basin in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota contain a combined estimated 7.4 billion bbl of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, 6.7 Tcf of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 530 million bbl of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids (NGL), according to an assessment released by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The House has introduced legislation to open federal waters off the coast of Virginia to oil and natural gas development, and the Senate is expected to offer a companion bill in the coming weeks. Virginia lawmakers in Congress and at the state level have pressured the Interior Department to open the coastal waters to offshore development for years (see NGI, July 11, 2011). The Virginia Jobs and Energy Act (HR 1782), introduced by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA), mandates that Lease Sale 220 be conducted within one year and that one lease sale be held in subsequent five-year oil and gas leasing programs. Co-sponsors are Virginia Republican Reps. Rob Wittman, Robert Hurt and Morgan Griffith. During the last Congress, Rigell introduced similar legislation (HR 3882) after the Obama administration shut down exploration off of Virginia’s coast. Provisions of the bill passed the House in 2012 as part of a larger energy package, but it failed to make it out of Congress.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., which has dropped rigs and deferred most of its dry natural gas drilling for the year, said last week that stronger-than-anticipated output from the Marcellus Shale should lift gas output higher in 2013 than it was two years ago.

With an average production rate of almost 10 MMcf/d in the first quarter, a discovery well in the Piceance Basin may produce in the first few months what a typical well in the Niobrara formation has done over 25 to 30 years, WPX energy CEO Ralph Hill said Thursday.

The Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative (EIPC) on Monday said that while it has completed a transmission analyses as part of an electric system transmission planning effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the government agency has now asked the working group to look into whether the country’s natural gas infrastructure is up to the challenges posed by increased gas-fired power generation.