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The North Dakota legislature’s Administrative Rules Committee (ARC) on Monday unanimously agreed to tighten the requirements for oil and gas spills and for royalties.

California regulators recently gave the green light to two repowerings at coastal natural gas-fired generation plants that represent a combined 1,884 MW of mostly baseload generating capacity.

Yet another developer is at work to build a natural gas-fired power plant in Appalachia, this time in Ohio’s Monroe County on a rust belt site that was purchased out of bankruptcy with a vision to revitalize it for Utica Shale-related growth.

A WPX Energy Inc. affiliate has paid a $1.2 million civil penalty to Pennsylvania for a 2012 incident in which it was determined that a leaking impoundment at a well site in Westmoreland County contaminated five private water supplies, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said Monday.

While Colorado remains the focal point for local government seeking more control of oil/natural gas drilling, the issue has also found its way to Los Angeles. The nation’s second-largest city still can count dozens of active drilling sites, none more controversial than one operated by Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan.

A fire still raged on Tuesday consuming 36 oil and produced water storage tanks in New Mexico at a drilling site owned and operated by Tulsa, OK-based WPX Energy. Thirty of the tanks are used for temporary oil storage.

A Los Angeles zoning official has placed a big stop sign in front of plans by a unit of Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan to add onsite burning equipment for escaping natural gas at its much-maligned urban drilling site near the University of Southern California (USC) campus.

An idle and already troubled urban oil drilling site in the shadow of downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday was hit with a permanent injunction by a California Superior Court judge that will keep it shut down until the operator, Allenco Energy Co., installs a health and safety monitoring system at the two-acre site.

A fight between local residents and a unit of Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas Co. has heated up again over plans by the operator to flare associated gas at the site, which is in a working class neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles near the University of Southern California (USC) campus. The company is waiting for a city of Los Angeles zoning decision on its plans.