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Fort Worth City Council members got an earful Tuesday night from a standing-room-only audience about a proposal to tighten drilling restrictions in the Barnett Shale town. Protected use areas, multiple well pad site permitting and saltwater disposal are among the items being weighed.

West Virginia, which collected less than $55 million in severance taxes from natural gas operations last year, could see that number jump to nearly $120 million by 2016, thanks in large part to the state’s growing Marcellus Shale industry, according to Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued an executive order Tuesday directing the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to begin enforcing several new safeguards on Marcellus Shale drilling, and to identify areas of regulatory concern.

State lawmakers in West Virginia have created a bipartisan 10-member panel to discuss and seek a consensus over Marcellus Shale regulatory reform.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on Monday signed an executive order requiring the state to undertake a study of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, with recommendations on a possible state-level severance tax and a report on potential impacts of drilling on groundwater among the items due over the next three years.

Companies that aim to export domestic shale gas can expect to face a tough spot market, according to Terry Engelder, the Penn State University geosciences professor who helped prove the value of the Marcellus Shale.

The mayor of Dallas has directed city council to form a Gas Drilling Task Force and appointed a former council member to lead the body.

A moratorium on Marcellus Shale permits could be back on the table in Maryland.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have been awarded a $412,000, three-year grant by the Heinz Endowments to identify and mitigate the effects of Marcellus Shale natural gas exploration and development on the state’s forest ecosystem. The interdisciplinary research team, led by two faculty members in the College of Agricultural Sciences, will evaluate landscape change as a result of gas exploration disturbances, assess local and landscape-scale changes to the forest ecosystem and develop an electronic field guide for onsite remediation and wildlife habitat enhancement at Marcellus drilling sites. The team also plans to pilot a long-term citizen-science based monitoring program to track changes to the physical landscape and biotic communities.