States

Despite indications last month to the contrary (see Daily GPI, Nov. 11), the Obama administration’s goal is to save the threatened sage grouse without listing it as an endangered species, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told a winter meeting of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) in Las Vegas Saturday.

Proposed federal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rules are either an economic burden or an environmental necessity, according to millions of comments submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Polls show Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov.Tom Corbett narrowing the double-digit lead that Democratic challenger Tom Wolf has enjoyed for much of the campaign. The election has high stakes for the oil and gas industry as Wolf has pushed a severance tax and made energy reform a mainstay of his campaign.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said it is expanding its program for collecting weekly residential heating oil and propane price data from 24 to 38 states this winter.

The issues that linger between federal regulators and oil/rail industry representatives over crude oil rail transportation are going to be resolved, but changes in the Obama administration’s cabinet could slow the process, the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) chief economist told NGI Wednesday.

The United States is set to join the “legion” of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters on the surge of production from the shale boom, setting up a significant change to global markets, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest World Economic Outlook.

ExxonMobil Corp. isn’t about to let the natural gas and oil opportunities in North America slip out of its grasp, CEO Rex Tillerson told a Houston audience Thursday. But federal officials might if they don’t allow energy exports to be freely traded, he said.

Regulators in 27 states, which collectively account for 98% of domestic oil and natural gas production, have “substantially improved groundwater protection laws and regulations governing oil and natural gas production,” including laws governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking), according to a report by the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC).

There will be no big decline in North Dakota oil and natural gas production over the next two years, the state’s chief oil/gas regulatory told an association of the state’s county energy officials on Thursday. Major production will remain concentrated in four counties: Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams.