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Federal regulators, working with Walter Oil & Gas Corp., said Friday they were continuing to oversee and coordinate response efforts to secure the producer’s South Timbalier Block 220 natural gas well in the shallow Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which blew out last Tuesday and ignited a fire later that night.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last Thursday quashed an appeal by the state Public Utility Commission (PUC), leaving in place an earlier court order that the commission cannot use a review process to enforce some provisions of Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Goodrich Petroleum Corp. is buying a 66.7% working interest in producing assets and about 277,000 gross acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) for $26.7 million as it continues to build scale in the play and improve its drilling performance.

The opening of the Mariner West I ethane pipeline and new processing plants should provide some relief to current wet gas constraints in the Marcellus and Utica shales, and the plays should be largely de-bottlenecked by the end of next year, according to analysts at Barclays.

A wide variety of outcomes are possible when contemplating the likelihood that an oil or natural gas injection well could increase the chance of seismic activity, including the possibility of not operating the well at all, according to a draft report by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) workgroup.

Consol Energy has drilled its first Upper Devonian Shale well, in Greene County, PA, with results that bode well for the 300,000 acres it controls with commercial Upper Devonian potential.

World energy consumption will increase by 56% between 2010 and 2040, driven largely by increased demand from developing countries, according to the International Energy Outlook 2013 (IEO2013), which was released last Thursday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). It sees global natural gas demand increasing by 64%.

Thanks to the Marcellus Shale, Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. recently completed the best quarter in its history on an operational and financial basis, said CEO Dan Dinges. The company is adding a sixth rig in the play as it anticipates multiple infrastructure projects will come online in the months ahead, increasing the ability to get its gas to markets.

Baker Hughes Inc. is optimistic about North America for the second half of 2013, but sector leader Schlumberger Ltd. still expects an oversupplied pressure pumping market.