Term

Elected officials in Delaware County, NY, are demanding that the state and New York City pay $81.3 billion in reparations over 60 years for lost property rights, on the grounds that a proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the city’s extended watershed would exclude 80% of the county’s land from Marcellus Shale drilling.

Shippers have stepped up for long-term contracts for capacity on the proposed Texas Express Pipeline (TEP) and the natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline project will move forward, a trio of project sponsors said Tuesday.

Unconventional shale gas in the United States has proved to be a boon to the domestic economy, but if it’s only a “bridge” to a low carbon future, efforts have to be stepped up to “prepare a landing at the other end” — and that won’t be easy, energy economists said in a new report.

London-based BP plc reached a operational “turning point” in October and has begun to invest for the long term, CEO Bob Dudley told investors last week.

BP plc reached a “turning point” in its operations in October and has begun to invest for the long term, CEO Bob Dudley told investors on Tuesday.

New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens said the agency plans to maintain current staff levels during the upcoming fiscal year because the budget doesn’t include funds to monitor new unconventional wells.

BP plc won’t be able to collect from Halliburton Co. any of the cleanup costs and economic losses that resulted from the Macondo well blowout in 2010 in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), a district judge in New Orleans has ruled. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who is to oversee a Macondo trial beginning later this month, in January made a similar ruling for Transocean Ltd. BP filed a lawsuit last year to recover from Halliburton, Transocean Ltd. and Cameron International some of the estimated $40 billion in costs and losses that followed the well explosion (see NGI, April 25, 2011) The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 10-md-02179. Halliburton was the well cementing contractor, Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and Cameron manufactured the blowout preventer for the Macondo well. Cameron and BP settled their lawsuit in December (see NGI, Dec. 19, 2011). On Feb. 27 the litigants are scheduled to meet in New Orleans where Barbier is to preside over the initial BP spill trial.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has found itself in the cross-hairs for statewide criticism regarding a $2.2 billion long-term plan to upgrade its natural gas pipeline system in California.

The “perma-bulls” at Raymond James & Associates Inc. have dialed back their assumptions for the U.S. natural gas rig count and giving in to the inevitable: low prices are taking down rigs in the gas patch. The good news: there’s “blistering” growth for oil and liquids drillers.