Strong

A frequent customer of Enterprise Products Partners LP in several shale play infrastructure projects, Chesapeake Energy Corp. has stepped up to be the anchor shipper on the partnership’s proposed pipeline to carry ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shales to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

With a strong natural gas pipeline/storage infrastructure but limits on supply sources, Europe is putting more research and development into making synthetic methane from hydrogen, which some energy stakeholders think will be the future means of beefing up natural gas supplies. A number of large utilities are partnering with researchers in Germany who think this has commercial possibilities.

Encana Corp. delivered strong operational performance in 3Q2011, with North American onshore natural gas and liquids output up 6% from the year-ago period, the company said Thursday. However, CEO Randy Eresman said many of the gas giant’s “drier” plays will see less spending in 2012 to direct more of the budget to pricier liquids-rich and oily shales.

Encana Corp. delivered strong operational performance in 3Q2011, with North American onshore gas and liquids output up 6% from the year-ago period, the company said Thursday.

An interior oil and natural gas supply glut, the result of strong output from shales and tight oil and gas plays, is developing because infrastructure can’t keep up, and that in turn is pressuring prices, according to Canaccord Genuity.

Employment in the core industries that drive Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania more than doubled to 20,837 people between 2008 and 2011, while employment in ancillary industries dropped by around 1% to 193,813, according the Center for Workforce Information and Analysis (CWIA) at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan group that represents all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties says it supports a local impact fee on natural gas development in the state but has “strong reservations” about counties being ultimately responsible for its levying and administration.

The outlook for oil output from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas is strong enough to cause analysts at Wood Mackenzie to predict that it will rival the Bakken Shale by 2015 as North America’s leading tight-oil producer.

The United States is the undisputed leader in the development of unconventional natural gas resources. However, much of the rest of the world is on to the shale gas promise and will soon be exploiting its reserves, according to a new analysis by Douglas-Westwood.