Weeks

For the second time in a matter of weeks, President Obama last Tuesday acknowledged that natural gas will play a critical role in the nation’s energy portfolio going forward. “We have a lot of natural gas here in this county,” he said at a town hall meeting in Annandale, VA. He acknowledged the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of the nation’s prolific shale natural gas supply, although he did not mention the practice by name. In late March, Obama championed natural gas as a new source of energy (see NGI, April 4). “The problem is…extracting it [shale gas] from the ground. The technologies aren’t as developed as we’d like and so there are some concerns that it might create pollution in our groundwater, for example. So we’ve got to make sure that if we’re going to do it [fracking], we do it in a way that doesn’t poison people,” Obama said.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, President Obama Tuesday acknowledged that natural gas will play a critical role in the nation’s energy portfolio going forward.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, President Obama Tuesday acknowledged that natural gas will play a critical role in the nation’s energy portfolio going forward.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead has been busy in the past few weeks signing a long list of bills into law, including a half-dozen energy measures dealing with a state energy improvement program, microbes use in natural gas drilling, natural gas vehicles (NGV), wind project property owners’ rights, and even a nuclear energy production study.

As has been rumored for weeks, Encana Corp. agreed late Wednesday to sell a half-stake in its Cutbank Ridge assets in British Columbia and Alberta to a subsidiary of PetroChina International Ltd. for C$5.4 billion.

There was something familiar about the pattern of Wednesday’s cash market. Perhaps it was because exactly two weeks earlier Northeast citygates were also spiking in the face of a approaching winter storm while nearly all other points softened moderately.

Energy regulators must operate independently of both industry and environmental groups, led only by facts and the rule of law, said Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary John Hanger, who leaves office this month after a tenure of more than two years during which activity in the state’s Marcellus Shale mushroomed.

With the final report of the National Commission on the BP Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling due in just a few weeks, co-chair William K. Reilly is advising oil and gas industry CEOs to create an autonomous, industry-managed safety institute, as the nuclear power industry did with the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

With the final report of the National Commission on the BP Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling due in just a few weeks, co-chair William K. Reilly is advising industry CEOs to create an autonomous, industry-managed safety institute, as the nuclear power industry did with the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.