Square

About 200,000 b/d of northern Alberta oil production remained temporarily halted Thursday as tinder-dry forests continue to fuel wildfires ignited by lightning.

Officials with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) announced Wednesday that the agency had started a multi-year effort to study water quantity, but rebuffed calls for it to be expanded to a comprehensive environmental study that could include the impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the basin.

In an effort to avoid having to restart the process from square one, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will file for a 90-day extension on Thursday to finalize rules governing high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF).

Supporters of an “environmental bill of rights” charter amendment in Mansfield, OH, prevailed at the polls on Tuesday, but opponents of the measure fear it could be used beyond its intended purpose — to possibly block wastewater injection wells — and applied to other types of business.

The North America oilfield services market “eroded more than we thought” in 3Q2012, but the spending decline could turn in January, said the research team at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).

Support is growing for the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) — a state government entity that controls an 8,000-square mile watershed covering about one-fifth of the state — to sell water for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shales, albeit on a temporary basis.

Support is growing for the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) — a state government entity that controls an 8,000-square mile watershed covering about one-fifth of the state — to sell water for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shales, albeit on a temporary basis.

As gasoline prices flirt with the $4/gallon level, the Senate majority is preparing to square off with Republicans over stripping major producers’ oil and natural gas subsidies.

With a portfolio and focus on U.S. unconventional shale plays, Houston-based independent Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. strives to become a “drilling factory,” said CEO Gary Evans, who spoke Wednesday to the Pritchard Capital Partners Energize 2012 Conference in San Francisco.