Virginia

Range Resources Corp. credited its second quarter results to a simple factor: better rocks.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued 262 permits for Marcellus Shale drilling and operators reported drilling 154 wells into the formation in June, according to information released Monday.

Chief Oil & Gas LLC announced Thursday that separate investigations by the company and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have concluded that Chief is not responsible for contaminating the water well of a woman in Bradford County, PA, who went on to become a vocal critic of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Chief Oil & Gas LLC has paid $180,000 in fines for two violations discovered last year at a well in Somerset County, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said Tuesday.

A bill that would have changed West Virginia’s regulation of Marcellus Shale drilling was not brought up for a final vote by the House of Delegates during the final day of its 2011 regular session Friday and so will not become law this year.

The West Virginia House of Delegates was set to vote late Friday or Saturday on a bill to change the state’s regulation of Marcellus Shale drilling.

A bill that would increase horizontal drilling permit fees in West Virginia to $5,000 from the current $650 that all drillers pay was passed out of committee and sent to the full House Thursday afternoon.

A U.S. subsidiary of Norway’s Statoil ASA has finalized an agreement to increase the availability of natural gas midstream services in the Marcellus Shale of northern West Virginia.

Bills that would change West Virginia’s regulation of Marcellus Shale drilling — stripped of forced pooling language and proposing smaller increases to horizontal permitting fees than previously considered — were passed Thursday by House and Senate committees in the state’s legislature in Charleston.