Shale Daily

Pennsylvania Attorney General (AG) Kathleen Kane confirmed during a budget hearing with state lawmakers on Tuesday that her office is conducting a far-reaching investigation into royalty deductions made by shale drillers, saying there would soon be a “resolution.”

An Ohio company is appealing an order issued by state regulators in September that forced it to shut down operations at an underground injection well that was thought to have triggered a series of earthquakes. The company said the shutdown is costing it money and affecting its business.

A North Carolina official said two oil and gas companies, one of them foreign, are interested in targeting the Triassic basins underlying Lee County and its neighbors for possible shale development as the state has lifted its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

General fund appropriations for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), which oversees hundreds of thousands of acres of state forest land leased by oil and gas drillers, would more than double under Gov. Tom Wolf’s 2015-2016 state budget.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives proposed budget, released Tuesday, takes a hatchet to what the party views as excessive or unnecessary spending, but the plan has kind words for domestic energy, namely oil and natural gas.

Natural gas consumers served by Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. LLC (Transco) in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic could have saved $2.6 billion from 2012 to 2014 if the pipeline’s proposed Atlantic Sunrise project had been in service, according to researchers at The Pennsylvania State University.

The Department of Interior (DOI) will release a final rule governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on public lands within days, and it is months away from unveiling standards designed to cut methane emissions from drilling on public lands as well, according to Secretary Sally Jewell.

Rex Energy Corp. said Monday that it has placed another six Marcellus Shale wells into sales in its core Butler Operated area in western Pennsylvania, with longer laterals and higher sand concentrations that it believes will lead to improved type curves in the play.

Spending cuts by domestic producers and the swift decline in the onshore rig count could signal a drop in U.S. oil production by the end of the year, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), said Monday. Meanwhile, analysts with Raymond James & Associates also see a substantial risk for even lower U.S. oil prices in the months ahead.