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A fire that has burned since early Tuesday at a Chevron Appalachia LLC natural gas well in southwest Pennsylvania had nearly burned out on its own by Thursday afternoon, said a state official, adding that a team of specialists was preparing to cap it and another well on the same pad.

A fire that has burned since early Tuesday at a Chevron Appalachia LLC natural gas well in southwest Pennsylvania had nearly burned out on its own by Thursday afternoon, said a state official, adding that a team of specialists was preparing to cap it and another well on the same pad.

State and local officials said an explosion early Tuesday at Chevron Appalachia LLC’s Lanco 7H well in Greene County, PA, was one of the worst the state has seen in modern history and the largest accident yet at an unconventional well in the state.

Shell Chemical LP has signed an amended purchase agreement that extends the period of time it has to buy a 300-acre site in Western Pennsylvania, which it continues to evaluate for a long-awaited ethane cracker that would convert ethane from the Marcellus Shale into ethylene.

Under increasing community and political pressure, Allenco Energy Co. agreed to shut down operations at a controversial urban drilling site a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles in a working class neighborhood just north of the University of Southern California campus. Allenco said it will use the pause in drilling to improve its operations.

Royal Dutch Shell plc has been in negotiations with several landowners who own property around a site in western Pennsylvania that the company is considering for a “world class” ethane cracker, a sign that Shell could be moving forward with the project.

Secondary locations are still in the running after a site in the state’s Nikiski area on the Kenai Peninsula.

Anti-fracking activists in the United Kingdom last week scored something of a win, forcing Staffordshire, England-based Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. to scale back conventional drilling operations in West Sussex on the advice of police worried about “direct action” by protesters who began a three-day demonstration last Sunday.

Boosted by its growing U.S. onshore business, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. reversed year-ago losses in the second quarter and reported production gains in most of its domestic plays.