Sales

Nearly 45 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) will be offered in March to producers for oil and natural gas leasing, federal officials said Thursday.

Fifteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday wrote the Department of Interior (DOI), urging that its Bureau of Land Management (BLM) move its quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales to the Internet. Currently they are conducted face-to-face in BLM field offices.

The Supreme Court is slated on Monday to hear oral arguments in a case dating back to the early 2000s that could define FERC’s authority to regulate natural gas and other markets.

Rex Energy Corp. plans to put a newly contracted rig to work at the beginning of next year in its Moraine East area in Butler County, PA, which it received in a $120 million deal last month with Royal Dutch Shell plc affiliate SWEPI LP (see Shale Daily, Aug. 13).

Contrary to recent business media reports and auto industry sales research, natural gas vehicle (NGV) growth, at least in the fleet trucking sector, is robust and not the lackluster picture that is being painted, according to officials with NGVAmerica, a Washington, DC-based trade association.

A federal judge has ruled in favor of continuing the Department of Interior's Gulf of Mexico (GOM) lease sales, despite claims by environmental groups that questioned offshore conditions following the Macondo well blowout in 2010.

Natural gas marketers continued to report significant declines in sales in the last three months of 2013 compared with 4Q2012, and the top three marketers — BP plc, Shell Energy NA and ConocoPhillips — were among those with the largest declines, according to NGI’s 4Q2013 Top North American Gas Marketers Ranking.

Continuing to fetch higher per-acre prices, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took in $49.8 million last Wednesday, selling 87 leases totaling 19,015 acres in North and South Dakota, the BLM Billings, MT, office said. South Dakota had the most activity.

A Tulsa, OK-based synfuel technology company has entered a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an unnamed shale gas exploration and production (E&P) company to study the feasibility of a plant for turning natural gas into diesel.