E&P

Rex Energy Corp. will cut 2015 spending by 44% from this year’s level, zero-in on its best assets in the Appalachian Basin and rely on efficiencies in its drilling program to grow year-over-year production by 33%.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has reached a settlement with Kinder Morgan Inc. affiliate Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC (TGP) that will require the midstream company to pay a $210,000 fine and fund a $540,000 clean-up program in the state.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has fined Vantage Energy Inc. nearly $1 million — one of the largest fines imposed this year on a shale driller in the state — for violations that stemmed from a January landslide at a well pad in Greene County.

Bakken Shale pioneer Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) Monday cut its 2015 capital spending plans for the second time in as many months in the face of depressed oil prices. Still, production is expected to increase.

Federal regulators have slapped ExxonMobil Corp. subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. with a $2.3 million fine for violations of the Clean Water Act that occurred at eight sites in West Virginia beginning in 2011.

Norway’s Statoil ASA has agreed to sell its average working interest (WI) in more than a half million non-operated acres in the Marcellus Shale to Southwestern Energy Corp. for $394 million.

Proposals to raise more fees against Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry are pouring in ahead of the 2015-2016 legislative session, with three put forth in the last week alone aimed at shoring up the state’s nearly $2 billion budget deficit.

While the plunge in global oil prices has dampened prospects, the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin/Niobrara Shale should not be totally discounted in the near future as a region for potential growth, a report from Raymond James & Associates indicated Monday.

Although it remains in the early stages of development more than two years after it was announced, the NEXUS Gas Transmission (NGT) system is facing growing resistance from communities along its proposed path in Ohio.