Toward

Texas lawmakers have sent a bill to Gov. Rick Perry that would provide $225 million in general revenue funds to help repair and maintain county roads damaged by oil and gas production activity, mainly in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale regions.

With about a month to go in the regular legislative session, Texas lawmakers are again inching their way toward changing up the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), including its name, or maybe not.

Newfield Exploration Co. is “right where we want to be toward execution of our 2013-2015 plan,” CEO Lee Boothby said last week during an earnings conference call in which management talked of a “surge” in Eagle Ford Shale production and the rising prominence of the Cana-Woodford Shale in the company’s liquids-focused portfolio.

Newfield Exploration Co. is “right where we want to be toward execution of our 2013-2015 plan,” CEO Lee Boothby said Wednesday during an earnings conference call in which management talked of a “surge” in Eagle Ford Shale production and the rising prominence of the Cana-Woodford Shale in the company’s liquids-focused portfolio.

Low natural gas prices and a “responsive regulatory environment” have prompted Australia’s Incitec Pivot Limited (IPL) to devote $850 million toward the construction of a world scale ammonia manufacturing plant on a brownfield site in Waggaman, LA, the company said Wednesday.

PDC Energy wells in the Codell formation of Colorado’s Wattenberg Field are outperforming those in the Niobrara, and the independent plans to drill as many Codell horizontal wells as Niobrara horizontals this year, company officials said during an analyst day conference in New York Thursday.

There could be increased bilateral cooperation between the United States and Mexico in several energy sectors, including development of the Eagle Ford Shale south of the border, depending on developments in Mexico’s latest reform government, according to an expert on Mexican policy.

Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. did something in the final three months of 2012 that no other onshore oilfield services provider has announced yet: hydraulic fracturing (fracking) services climbed and sales surpassed expectations — surprising even company executives.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) moved the state further toward retail deregulation last week, approving settlements with Dominion East Ohio Gas and Columbia Gas of Ohio that would allow the local distribution companies (LDC) to gradually move out of the merchant function starting with nonresidential customers.