E&P

Legislation that provides for a permanent, lowered tax rate for new oil and natural gas wells in Oklahoma is on its way to Gov. Mary Fallin, who is expected to sign it, after passing both houses of the state legislature.

Bonanza Creek Energy Inc. has doubled its acreage in the Wattenberg field in Colorado to more than 70,000 net acres for a leasehold producing 700 boe/d net, 85% weighted to oil.

There are several other plays and deeper formations yet to be tapped in the Bakken/Three Forks shale play, and the industry is still trying to determine how many total wells it will take to fully recover all the resources in the area, North Dakota’s chief oil/natural gas regulator, Lynn Helms, said Thursday during the final day of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett issued an executive order Friday lifting a moratorium on new oil and gas leases in state parks and forests and replacing it with a measure that will allow such leases, provided the drilling occurs on nearby land and surfaces in the parks and forests are not disturbed.

The United States needs to remove the existing ban on crude oil exports to lower domestic energy prices and boost jobs, Marathon Oil Corp. CEO Lee Tillman said Wednesday in keynote remarks to the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, ND.

With the increasingly real prospects for the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issuing new rules for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and combating gas flaring on oil/natural gas operations on federal lands, officials in North Dakota on Wednesday said they are skeptical about the federal agency’s ability to oversee industry operations.

Hess Corp. is selling its retail business, which includes more than 1,300 gasoline stations and convenience stores along the East Coast, to Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) for $2.6 billion as part of its strategy to focus on E&P activities, the company said Thursday.

More than three years after a New Year’s Eve 2011 magnitude-4.0 earthquake rattled Youngstown, OH, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has begun installing portable seismic monitoring stations across the eastern half of the state to monitor Class II underground injection wells similar to one linked to a Youngstown quake.

Canadian natural gas supplies have resumed growing regardless of whether producers want to keep on fueling the North American supply glut, the National Energy Board (NEB) said Tuesday.