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North America proved a winner for Schlumberger Ltd. in the third quarter, with revenue rising 7% sequentially, an all-time high, and margins expanding 57 basis points (bps), or 0.57%, to reach 20.3% on a year/year basis. New shale technology tested in several basins helped to lower drilling costs, and it’s now being given a look in other areas.

The average U.S. rig count in the final three months of this year should decline by about 2.5% from 2Q2013, a typical seasonal slowdown around the holidays, and above the pronounced drop in the same period of 2012, when the rig and well count fell by more than 5%, Baker Hughes Inc.’s CFO said Friday.

An anti-shale drilling protest in New Brunswick turned violent Thursday after authorities moved in to enforce an injunction to end an ongoing demonstration.

With natural gas-fired and renewable generation assets as an attraction, Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy Inc. said Friday it has entered a $2.5 billion “planned sponsor agreement” with Edison Mission Energy (EME) and some of its subsidiaries to eventually acquire the Chapter 11-mired independent power generation company. NRG said it hopes to close the acquisition in the first quarter next year.

In anticipating 1 million b/d of North Dakota crude oil production in the next few months, the state’s chief oil/natural gas overseer said Tuesday that the Bakken Shale has changed world energy dynamics to the point that North America soon may be a net exporter of oil.

A survey of world energy resources conducted by the World Energy Council (WEC) said the rise of shale gas in North America had turned the continent “upside down,” adding that it was one of several principal drivers to shape global energy supply and use over the past 20 years.

Range Resources Corp. announced another record high for quarterly production — this time achieving 960 MMcfe/d for 3Q2013– thanks in large part to the continuing success of its drilling program in the Marcellus Shale.

Natural gas prices for Friday physical delivery on average fell 9 cents in Thursday’s trading. It was a tale of two coasts as West Coast points suffered hefty double-digit losses within a weak power environment and a nominal weather outlook. East Coast locations were mixed with prices a few pennies on either side of unchanged.

A New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) plan to have ratepayers subsidize the cost to build new natural gas-fired power plants has been ruled unconstitutional by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.