Marcellus

A $7.5 million settlement reached last year between Pennsylvania landowners and Chesapeake Energy Corp. to resolve claims that the company improperly deducted post-production fees from royalty checks has yet to be approved and remains tied-up in a federal court.

With robust production growth in the Appalachian Basin and extensive infrastructure expansions on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian borders, the Midcontinent and Gulf Coast will be awash in natural gas over the next five years, according to three industry experts who spoke Tuesday at an energy forum in Chicago.

Researchers from two major universities and a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc said water used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations remains locked in the targeted shale formation and poses no threat to underground water supplies.

A new poll shows that residents of New York State and Pennsylvania have very divergent opinions on Marcellus Shale gas extraction, with most New Yorkers opposed, a majority of Pennsylvanians in favor, and even more of the latter in support of adopting a severance tax.

Hilcorp Energy Co. and state regulators are still trying to determine what caused a separator to catch fire early last Saturday at one of its well sites in Mercer County, PA, near the Ohio border.

Continuing an upward climb, operators in Ohio’s Marcellus and Utica shales produced more than 88 Bcf of natural gas and 2.4 million bbl of oil last quarter, surpassing in three months what they churned out in all of 2012, state regulators said Monday.

A subcontractor at a Williams Partners LP site in Marshall County, WV, was reportedly airlifted by helicopter on Monday after sustaining injuries when he became pinned between a lift and pipe, according to several local news media reports. Attempts to reach Williams for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful. The man, whose name was not released, was flown to a hospital in Morgantown, WV. According to reports, he sustained head, neck and back injuries. An investigation into the cause of the accident is ongoing.

PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC said its binding open season for a proposed pipeline to transport 1 Bcf/d of gas to Northeast markets resulted in 965,000 Dth/d of bids.

Williams is holding an open season through Sept. 29 for its Western Marcellus Pipeline Project, a 1-2 Bcf/d expansion of its Transco interstate pipeline to provide incremental firm capacity to markets in the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern United States by late 2018.