Treated

A bipartisan bill that would limit liabilities for any Pennsylvania oil and natural gas producer that uses treated coal mine water to drill and stimulate its wells has passed both the state House and Senate by wide margins and has been sent to Gov. Tom Wolf to sign into law.

What explorers know about the Mississippian Lime formation could fill a book. What they don’t know about the Midcontinent play could fill a few more, industry experts said Wednesday.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) experienced a rupture and explosion at about 8:45 a.m. EST Wednesday in a rural part of southeastern Ohio. One person was treated for respiratory symptoms and two structures were damaged.

July natural gas underwent a double-digit drubbing Thursday following a government inventory report showing greater-than-expected additions to inventories. Traders were surprised by the 98 Bcf addition reported by the Energy Information Administration, and prices promptly fell as expectations were for a smaller build. At the close July was 12.4 cents lower at $4.193 and August had dropped 13.3 cents to $4.217. July crude oil cascaded lower, giving up $4.39 to $91.02/bbl.

Whether treated wastewater from natural gas drilling sites will be more extensively analyzed for radiation levels still is an unknown, but at least two Pennsylvania water systems don’t plan to wait and will step up radiological tests, officials said last week.

House and Senate conferees have been called on to clarify in the financial regulatory reform bill that commercial end-users are not to be treated as “swap dealers” and thus are exempt from the requirement to clear over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions.

House and Senate conferees have been called on to clarify in the financial regulatory reform bill that commercial end-users are not to be treated as “swap dealers” and thus are exempt from the requirement to clear over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions, the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) and National Corn Grows Association (NCGA) told the Democratic leadership.

Energy traders still recovering from the October crude contract’s blowout expiration Monday were treated to a small corrective action Tuesday, while October natural gas futures tested the upper parameters of the recent trading range. November crude dropped $2.76 to close at $106.61/bbl and October natural gas ventured temporarily above $8 before finishing at $7.931, up 27.3 cents from Monday’s close.