Third

The GOP-controlled House on Thursday passed the third of three bills to expand natural gas and oil drilling in the U.S. offshore.

Noble Energy Inc. CEO Chuck Davidson said he was “really pleased” with the company’s growth in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

Seemingly unable to make up its mind about how substantive recent weather-based demand is, most of the cash market reversed direction for a third straight day Wednesday in chalking up small gains at nearly all points.

Range Resources Corp. and a shale-rich township in southwestern Pennsylvania will enter mediation to resolve their difficulties.

Excess hydroelectric supplies in the West should cut natural gas demand by one-third through August, according to a market alert released Wednesday by energy consultant Bentek Energy LLC. Forward gas prices in the western United States and Canada are overvalued as a result of demand loss that Bentek calculates to be 295 Bcf.

Prices continued to move higher at a majority of points as this week’s overall rebound completed its third day Wednesday. Heating load remains fairly strong as lows from the mid 20s through the low 40s are in the Thursday forecast for Canada and much of the northern two-thirds of the U.S.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are on the rise, necessitating expansion of Weir Oil & Gas unit Weir SPM’s manufacturing and services facility in Fort Worth, TX, the company said.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and a unit of Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) have struck a joint venture (JV) agreement that gives KNOC one-third of Anadarko’s interest in its southwest Texas Maverick Basin assets in the Eagle Ford Shale for about $1.55 billion.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has filled the five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) with his third appointment, Mark Ferron, 52, a senior partner at Silicon Valley Social Ventures, and a former investment banker in London with Deutsche Bank’s global markets division (2001-2009). He also worked as an executive with Salomon Brothers and Bank of America earlier in his financial industry career. Ferron hold a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. He joins CPUC President Michael Peevey, and Commissioners Timothy Alan Simon, Michael Florio and Catherine Sandoval on the CPUC. The latter two were appointed by Brown earlier this year.