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In what would be an historically high fine, the safety staff of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last week amended its $2.25 billion penalty recommendation against or Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) concerning the San Bruno, CA, natural gas pipeline rupture, to include a minimum of $300 million paid to the state’s general fund.

Baker Hughes Inc. executives on Friday said the total U.S. rig count should fall on average by 8% this year from 2012, but with better drilling efficiencies, the onshore well count may only decline by 4% to around 35,000.

A coalition of landowners in Wayne County, PA, is threatening to file a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) over a continuing delay in either enacting natural gas regulations in the basin or deferring regulation to its four member states.

Exco Resources Inc. is paying Chesapeake Energy Corp. $1 billion for something wet and something dry: about 55,000 acres in the liquids-rich Eagle Ford Shale of Texas and about 9,600 acres in the drier Haynesville Shale in North Louisiana.

Up to 40 Bcf/d of firm capacity contracts on pipelines is expected to expire by 2015, which would affect the “vast majority” of pipelines that transport natural gas to the Northeast, said an executive with Massachusetts-based Skipping Stone.

House Republicans are pushing legislation that would transfer authority to approve natural gas exports from the Department of Energy (DOE), which has granted two export requests, to FERC, which has only approved one export terminal.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz may be new at his job, but he successfully dodged a barrage of questions from the audience and reporters as to when his department would approve more licenses for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports at the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Energy Conference Monday.

An interim committee in the Wyoming legislature is considering drafting a bill that would put a severance tax on producers for the amounts of produced natural gas they flare.

On higher natural gas prices, Warren Resources Inc. said it would drill 25 new coalbed methane (CBM) wells in the Spyglass Hill Unit in Wyoming’s Washakie Basin, a sub-basin of the Greater Green River Basin, the New York City-based exploration and production company said.