Sign

As the clock was winding down for counties to sign on to the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale impact fee, also known as Act 13, a Commonwealth Court judge pushed back the start date for portions of the law to give local governments more time to adopt its standardized zoning measures.

The City Council of Binghamton, NY, voted 6-1 Wednesday night in favor of enacting a two-year ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) within the city limits.

Encana Corp. last week put a “for sale” sign on its Barnett Shale properties in North Texas, a 52,000 net acre swath of natural gas-rich land that currently produces 125 MMcfe/d.

The city of Morgantown, WV, made no moves to appeal to the state Supreme Court a judge’s ruling that struck down its ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking). It is instead considering its options to seek additional safety measures from Northeast Natural Energy (NNE).

A judge in West Virginia has struck down the city of Morgantown’s ordinance banning hydraulic fracturing (fracking), ruling that the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has exclusive dominion over the regulation of natural gas drilling.

New Jersey officials have told the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) that the state might withhold its dues to the organization if it doesn’t enact rules governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) within the Delaware River Basin by its next meeting in September.

There are more than oil/gas roughnecks benefiting from the growing boom in the Marcellus shale play; Pennsylvania banks are positioning themselves to share in the rewards, according to a report published in late June by an Arlington, VA-based investment bank, FBR Capital Markets.

In the wake of a well blowout last month in the Marcellus Shale, a Pennsylvania Senate committee has approved a bill (SB 995) that would require companies to provide to state and local authorities detailed emergency contact information for all of their wells in the state.

Thanks to recent upgrades to a compression station in northeastern Pennsylvania, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. increased its Marcellus Shale production 35% in a single day, a sign of how infrastructure bottlenecks in Appalachia are crimping production rates.