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Midstates Petroleum Co. agreed to pay Eagle Energy Production LLC $650 million in cash and stock for all of Eagle’s producing properties, and both developed and undeveloped acreage, primarily in the Mississippian Lime oil play in Oklahoma and Kansas, the Houston-based producer said Monday.

Three days after reporting an upbeat financial and operating performance in the second quarter, Chesapeake Energy Corp. said in a regulatory filing on Thursday it was subpoenaed in late June by the Department of Justice’s Midwest Field Office antitrust division.

Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. agreed Wednesday to pay Devon Corp. $1.4 billion for a 30% stake in 650,000 net acres in the Permian Basin’s Cline and Midland-Wolfcamp shales.

Laying out a blueprint for how small- and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of the opportunities provided within the current U.S. natural gas development boom, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has released the second in a series of recommended practices aimed at bolstering the Marcellus Shale region’s supply chain.

Several environmental groups and citizens are suing the Village of Painted Post in Steuben County, NY, over a contract to sell some of its water supplies to a unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc for its Marcellus Shale natural gas operations in Tioga County, PA.

Federal and state agencies have taken several steps recently to bolster the safety record of firms in the oil and gas patch, first by urging Oklahoma exploration and production companies to participate in a temporary work stoppage to address safety and health issues, and second by issuing a nationwide hazard alert related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

FERC Thursday approved the requests of several companies to abandon by sale all or virtually all of their pipeline facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as some onshore facilities.

After several years of processing and various starts and stops, a plan to repower an existing natural gas-fired coastal electric generation plant in North San Diego County using a fraction of the 100-acre existing prime seaside acreage was unanimously approved Thursday by the California Energy Commission (CEC). Commissioners set aside possible conflicts with local and state zoning restrictions.

Gas pipeline safety laws continue to swirl around in the current session of the California state legislature, with several bills still active, although at least a couple of proposals were declared dead in committee earlier in May. A new bill (AB 478) in the lower house Assembly was introduced Tuesday to redirect fines paid by natural gas utilities to help pay for pipeline upgrades mandated in the wake of the San Bruno, CA, pipeline rupture and explosion nearly two years ago.