Shale Daily

San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Thursday sued the U.S. Interior Department for permitting hydraulic fracturing (fracking) off the California coast, alleging it threatens ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine wildlife.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is creating a seven-member advisory committee to consult the agency on its regulation of the state’s conventional oil and gas industry in a move that will allow its existing board to focus entirely on shale drilling.

The backlog of uncompleted wells will grow in the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales, but so too could the new acreage plays and/or small-scale merger/acquisition activity, according to strategies outlined Thursday by CEOs at EOG Resources and Marathon Oil Corp.

A Travis County, TX, judge has granted the request of the city of Denton, TX, to move a lawsuit against the city filed by the Texas General Land Office (GLO) to a district court in Denton County. GLO last year sued the city in Austin, TX, after Denton voters overwhelmingly passed a ban on hydraulic fracturing (see Shale Daily,Nov. 5, 2014). GLO is challenging the city’s fracking ban on constitutional grounds, as is the Texas Oil & Gas Association in its own lawsuit. It is possible that the two actions could be combined. A GLO spokesman told NGI’s Shale Daily that the office had no comment on the change of venue for the lawsuit and said it was just waiting to go to court. Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers have introduced bills in the current legislature that if passed would likely thwart other Texas cities from enacting similar fracking bans (see Shale Daily,Dec. 18, 2014).

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. said low commodity prices for oil and natural gas are forcing it to trim more than $600 million from its capital expenditures (capex) budget for 2015, and it plans to cut four rigs deployed in the Marcellus and Eagle Ford shales by the second quarter.

XTO Energy Inc. has been assessed a $1.33 million federal penalty for “knowing or willful” failure to allow an audit in North Dakota concerning multiple lease, or communitization, agreements. The Department of Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) said at issue was information related to federal leases that were combined because they draw from the same oil or natural gas reservoir. A request was made in February 2013 that the ExxonMobil Corp. affiliate comply with a data request by April 1, 2013. Despite “numerous” requests, the company did not comply until February 2014, “preventing timely completion of North Dakota’s audit,” ONRR said. The agency is responsible for collecting/disbursing revenues from energy production that occurs on federal and American Indian lands.

Fire continued to burn days after 27 oil tankers, part of a 109-car CSX Corp. train carrying Bakken Shale crude oil, derailed and 19 of the cars exploded on Feb. 16 in southern West Virginia (see Shale Daily, Feb. 17).

Enable Midstream Partners LP, lifted by increasing natural gas volumes from the Anadarko Basin’s South-Central Oklahoma Oil Province (SCOOP), is looking for business ventures both in the Midcontinent and across the U.S. onshore, the company’s CEO said Wednesday.

PDC Energy Inc. plans to focus almost entirely on its core Wattenberg Field acreage in Colorado this year to drive production up 50% after writing down its Utica Shale assets in Ohio in the fourth quarter and selling off its last dry gas assets in the Marcellus Shale last year (see Shale Daily, July 30, 2014).