Southwestern

The Marcellus Shale’s location near high-consumption centers, its bountiful reserves and its chameleon-like ability to produce wet or dry natural gas in abundance have made it a worthwhile destination for midstream operators, and it should remain so for several years, according to Fitch Ratings.

MarkWest Energy Partners LP is building out its services for Appalachian rich-gas producers with the $512 million acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Keystone Midstream Services LLC.

While there are competing proposals to break through the bottlenecks to bringing rich gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) in the Bakken formation to market, the Alliance Pipeline and Aux Sable NGL systems think they have the inside track. In the meantime, a substantial amount of NGL movement continues through rail and trucking.

A Bureau of Land Management (BLM) field office in southwestern Colorado has released a preliminary environmental assessment calling for 21 parcels and 24,324 acres to be included in an upcoming natural gas lease sale. The draft assessment pared an initial proposal to include 22 parcels and up to 29,811 acres, mostly in Gunnison County, CO, in the auction, which is scheduled to be held Aug. 9. Under the BLM program, obtaining the leases is the first part of a multi-step process in which each lease holder would have to obtain a drilling permit, which would entail another environmental assessment of the individual drilling plans for each lease. It is all part of BLM’s master development plan and its use of multi-well development to help manage federal lease development. Before any exploration and development work can start, however, there will be site-specific reviews and analysis completed as called for under the National Environmental Policy Act, BLM officials said.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Jesse White, a Democrat from the southwestern corner of the state, has introduced House Resolution 593 asking drillers to commit to a set of “Marcellus Shale Principles,” that include hiring local workers, protecting the environment and acting transparently in dealings with stakeholders. “Drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale has created thousands of jobs, and has the potential to create thousands more at a critical time in our economy, and in areas that have historically suffered from high unemployment rates for many years…However, we can’t simply hand free reign over without any forethought to consequences and how our local communities could be affected for generations to come,” White said.

Dominion Resources Inc. announced Friday that its earnings for the full-year 2011 and the fourth quarter both declined due to lower profits in its merchant generation business and a decrease in weather-related energy sales.

Williams Partners LP (WPZ) said Thursday it has started up the Springville natural gas gathering pipeline, one of the building blocks in its plan to secure large-scale infrastructure in the capacity-constrained Marcellus Shale. Springville initially would help deliver 300 MMcf/d to Northeast markets.

Range Resources Corp. is taking a southwestern Pennsylvania township to court over zoning in the Marcellus Shale.

A collection of energy players announced plans Wednesday to expand a major interstate pipeline to accommodate emerging shale gas supplies from Ohio.