Where

Elected officials at all levels of government in Pennsylvania should implement regulations to block gas extraction in “pristine places and locations near where people live or work,” said the PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center. The group said it has documented well sites within two miles of more than 320 daycare facilities, 67 schools and nine hospitals in the state. PennEnvironment also called on lawmakers to strengthen clean water laws, “halt the use of toxic chemicals” in hydraulic fracturing and increase resources available to regulators. In addition, PennEnvironment called on the federal government to “end the special treatment for the gas industry and apply the nation’s core public health and environmental laws to gas extraction, just as it would regulate any potential threat to public health or the environment.”

A shale-rich township in southwestern Pennsylvania is proposing mediation to resolve a dispute with a local gas driller.

Targeting natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) production from shale plays in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania; and conventional production from the Gulf of Mexico, Crosstex Energy Inc. unit Crosstex Energy LP has completed and brought online two expansions of its natural gas gathering system in the Barnett Shale in North Texas and has reactivated its Eunice NGL fractionator in south central Louisiana.

Except for a sizeable number of flat to moderately higher locations in the West — where a cooling trend is taking overnight lows in the Rockies and Upper Plains back to either side of freezing — and elsewhere, Tuesday’s overall firmness didn’t last. Most of the cash market fell Wednesday due to a combination of a dearth of eastern weather-based load — in the form of either heat or substantive cold — and three successive previous days of futures weakness.

Midstream players Energy Transfer Partners LP (ETP) and Regency Energy Partners LP have formed a joint venture to follow their producer customers to where the money is: liquids-rich shale plays. The partners are acquiring natural gas liquids (NGL) storage, fractionation and transportation assets to expand their producer service offerings.

A bill in a Texas House committee if passed would repeal a natural gas drilling tax break that benefits the vast majority of wells in the state’s shale gas plays. The bill’s sponsor says the incentive has outlived its usefulness, but an industry advocate claims its repeal would be a gas production- and job-killer.

Although there are quite a few parts of North America as cold as or colder than the Northeast, that region remained the only one where major heating load was having a substantive impact on prices. At nearly all other locations moderate softness was returning Tuesday.

The regional natural gas pipeline gluts forecast for the Southeast and the Rockies in 2011 won’t spare the Marcellus Shale, where a lack of capacity to carry gas to New York City (NYC) along the eastern Pennsylvania border remains unresolved, said Societe Generale energy analysts.

The regional natural gas pipeline gluts forecast for the Southeast and the Rockies in 2011 won’t spare the Marcellus Shale, where a lack of capacity to carry gas to New York City (NYC) along the eastern Pennsylvania border remains unresolved, said Societe Generale energy analysts.