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U.S. exports of natural gas to Mexico will grow as the country’s production fails to keep pace with demand and new pipelines on both sides of the border relieve transport constraints. However, Mexico eventually could come to rely on supply from its share of the Eagle Ford Shale, and U.S. gas could find higher prices overseas through liquefaction and export, Goldman Sachs said Friday.

U.S. exports of natural gas to Mexico will grow as the country’s production fails to keep pace with demand and new pipelines on both sides of the border relieve transport constraints. However, Mexico eventually could come to rely on supply from its share of the Eagle Ford Shale, and U.S. gas could find higher prices overseas through liquefaction and export, Goldman Sachs said last Friday.

Mexico’s Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) was reported Thursday on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to be contemplating layoffs of up to 15,000 workers as apart of an overhaul of the government’s energy supply operations. However, NGI sources in California and Mexico City said it may be premature to talk about the possible downsizing of a workforce that is 72% union represented. “Given new appointments [to senior positions], there is a plan to reorganize the company into upstream and downstream segments,” said a Mexico City source who follows Pemex. A total restructuring is “still in process, so nothing has happened so far,” the source said. In California, an energy attorney specializing in Latin America said he had not heard of any layoffs, but any such move would be part of Pemex’s upcoming “modernization and streamlining efforts.” A spokesperson for Sempra Energy, which has extensive holdings in Mexico, said the company’s Mexico City office was unaware of any Pemex plans for layoffs.

Attorneys on both sides of the legal battle over Act 13, Pennsylvania’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law, spent two hours in a packed Pittsburgh courtroom Wednesday giving oral arguments before the state Supreme Court.

In a decision in which both sides are claiming victories of sorts, a federal district judge in Denver on June 22 ordered the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to review and revise its drilling plan for the Roan Plateau in western Colorado where one operator has plans to drill thousands of natural gas wells.

In a decision in which both sides are claiming victories of sorts, a federal district judge in Denver on Friday ordered the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to review and revise its drilling plan for the Roan Plateau in western Colorado where one operator has plans to drill thousands of natural gas wells.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., which took incoming fire from all sides last week, is taking more heat about its liquidity from credit ratings agencies and energy analysts than about CEO Aubrey McClendon’s alleged financial indiscretions.

The debate in New Brunswick over shale gas development in the emerging Frederick Brook Shale continued to escalate Thursday, with politicians on opposing sides of the issue trading barbs and setting the stage for a showdown this week in the Legislative Assembly.

The New York Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee this week reported out of committee legislation to suspend until June 1, 2012 the issuance of new permits to drill that use hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) to extract natural gas or oil.