Whose

A group of environmental organizations has written to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 6 administrator alleging that politics and not science caused the agency to drop a water contamination case against Range Resources Corp. and calling for a resumption of legal action.

The country is in the midst of an “unconventional revolution in oil and gas” whose implications reach well beyond the energy industry, IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, tells the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Power in pre-filed testimony to be given Tuesday.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon, whose retirement from the company he founded 24 years ago was announced late Tuesday, told employees in an email that the departure centered on some differences with the board of directors.

The U.S. Commerce Department has granted Valero Energy Corp. a one-year authorization to ship crude oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast to a company-owned refinery in Quebec, Canada.

The bill (H.R. 4606), which cleared the House by 286-10, was sponsored by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), whose term expires at the end of the year, and was supported by Montana Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester. It allows maintenance work on a 3 1/2-mile section of pipeline, which was built in the 1950s, that runs through Glacier National Park lands. It is part of an 118-mile pipeline system that serves about 25,000 people and runs parallel to U.S. Highway 2 along Glacier’s southern boundary.

A revised version of the proposed Palomar Pipeline, whose FERC application was pulled back last year, is still needed and should be revived at the federal regulatory agency by mid-2013, NW Natural CEO Gregg Kantor told analysts during a recent 3Q2012 earnings conference.

BG Group, whose global expertise is centered around natural gas, on Wednesday said it plans to slash U.S. drilling, as well as other global gas-weighted projects, because of low commodity prices.

ExxonMobil Corp., whose international portfolio more often than not has fortified it from the ups and downs of the volatile commodities market, failed to outrun global uncertainty and lower U.S. natural gas prices in the third quarter, with profits off 7% year/year to $9.6 billion, $750 million less than a year ago. Production also declined to its lowest level in three years.

Williams, whose natural gas midstream and pipeline infrastructure stretches from Canada into the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, is tweaking its earnings forecasts lower for the next two years based on conversations with customers that indicate activity will be slower in the short term.