Think

After a bruising ride on roller-coaster markets, the treasurer of Canada’s chief natural gas- and oil-producing jurisdiction is urging its residents to think about weaning public services off a reliance on resource windfalls.

San Diego, CA-based Royale Energy Inc., a publicly held exploration and production (E&P) independent with about 15 MMcf/d of gas production, mostly in Northern California, was the biggest bidder for Alaska North Slope shale oil plays offered last month in a state lease sale.

Three researchers at Cornell University say a controversial study, conducted by their colleagues and stating that shale gas activities posed a more serious threat to global warming than coal, contains serious flaws and should be revisited.

The natural gas industry will miss out on the prize of shale if it can’t convince the public that development is safe, a Chevron Corp. executive told a Pittsburgh audience Thursday.

Riding the Bakken shale rush, North Dakota appears in a good position to jump up to the second biggest oil producing state in the nation behind only Texas. If the upper Midwest state achieves that status next year as expected, it would leapfrog over both Alaska and California, something that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

A Pennsylvania think tank believes a recent study inflates the economic importance of the Marcellus Shale.

With the boom in shale gas production, an oversupply of natural gas is likely to outstrip demand for the fuel and keep prices under the $5 level, Colorado-based Bentek CEO Porter Bennett told the gas committee Monday at the summer meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) in Los Angeles.

Natural gas experts say they believe the Marcellus Shale play can be developed in a way that benefits both industry and area residents, but they voiced concern about possible federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that they said could be based on situations unique to Marcellus.

Houston-based Marathon, which is the fourth largest integrated producer in the United States, began leasing acreage in the DJ Basin in 2010. It currently is acquiring 2-D and 3-D seismic data and expects to participate in eight to 12 gross exploration wells by the end of the year.