Supervisor

There will be no quick replacement for Tom Doll, who resigned as Wyoming Oil and Gas Supervisor suddenly last week (see Shale Daily, June 18), according to a spokesperson for Gov. Matt Mead. The governor and the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission are working out the details of the search for a replacement, the spokesperson told NGI’s Shale Daily.

Officials in the Town — not the City — of Rochester, NY, are considering a ban on natural gas extraction.

The chief of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) said Thursday he was considering whether to extend a 60-day comment period on DEC’s hydraulic fracturing (fracking) report, which was issued in July.

The U.S. Forest Service on Thursday withdrew its decision to not permit oil and natural gas drilling in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in the Wyoming Range.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has hired four inspectors, one inspector supervisor and one enforcement analyst for the sole purpose of monitoring natural gas drilling, production and water disposal activities in the Fayetteville Shale.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has hired four inspectors, one inspector supervisor and one enforcement analyst for the sole purpose of monitoring natural gas drilling, production and water disposal activities.

A former energy trading supervisor for Western Gas Resources Inc. has been ordered to pay a $60,000 civil penalty to settle charges that he attempted to manipulate natural gas prices in 2000 and 2001, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In a consent order issued earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Phillip S. Figa required Andrew K. Richmond of Superior, CO, to pay the penalty, and it permanently prohibits him from applying for registration, engaging in any activity requiring registration, or acting as a principal as defined by the National Futures Association, and from directly or indirectly trading on or subject to the rules of any registered entity. The consent order arose from a CFTC lawsuit filed on April 12, 2005, which found that between April 2000 and February 2001, Richmond pressured traders he supervised to submit false gas trading information, including fabricated price and volume information, to Gas Daily in order to benefit certain positions held by Western Gas (see Daily GPI, April 15, 2005). In addition, the consent order found that at least two traders that Richmond supervised submitted false trade information to Gas Daily. In 2004, Western Gas agreed to pay a civil penalty of $7 million in a settlement with the CFTC over charges of attempted manipulation and reporting of false information by traders on gas transactions in the 1999-2002 time period (see Daily GPI, July 2, 2004). “Previous investigations such as this one have shed light on published cash commodity indexes that are used as vehicles of price discovery,” said CFTC’s Gregory Mocek, director of enforcement. “Traders should not take comfort over the fact that such indexes are unregulated on a day-to-day basis because supplying bogus information to an index compiler is ultimately a violation of federal law that we will pursue.”