Shale Daily

The plethora of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale has created an identity crisis of sorts for the nation’s pipeline systems, with organic opportunities for the bedrock pipes to the Northeast, a shift in direction for others, and new markets for all, according to a top analyst with Moody’s Investors Service.

Panhandle Oil and Gas Inc. said it has signed an agreement to purchase a 16% non-operated working interest in 11,100 gross (1,775 net) acres in the core of the Eagle Ford Shale from private sellers for $80.4 million.

Multiple Appalachian operators have earnestly started to delineate their Utica Shale acreage in West Virginia, delivering on the promises they’ve made in recent months to push the formation’s boundaries south beyond Ohio and drill deeper and longer on the lateral (see Shale Daily, March 26).

FERC has approved North Dakota Pipeline’s proposed tariff structure involving committed rates for priority and non-priority service, and uncommitted rates and apportionment principles based on Commission precedent, for the company’s Sandpiper project, which would provide Bakken crude producers access to downstream markets at a new interconnection point at Superior, WI.

Canadian shale oil hunters are embarking on the pursuit of rich deposits believed to have migrated north from the United States and become trapped by dense rock beneath the plains of Saskatchewan eons before the border existed.

In the state with the nation’s second-highest drilling rig count, Oklahoma elected and industry officials are considering an across-the-board hike of the tax on oil/natural drilling, but it would still be considerably lower than a counter proposal by a billionaire philanthropist in Oklahoma City.

An oil spill Thursday morning on the Plains All American Pipeline in Los Angeles near the concrete-covered Los Angeles River, which long ago was turned into a regional flood control system, was contained before it could cause serious damage.

A trio of lawmakers supporting oil and natural gas drilling in North Carolina introduced a bill Thursday that would extend the deadline for the state to develop its own regulatory program; create a new Oil and Gas Commission; reconstitute the state’s Mining and Energy Commission (MEC); invalidate local bans on oil and gas activities; ban wastewater injection wells, and establish a severance tax.

The environmental virtues of cheap, abundant and clean-burning natural gas from shale plays are offset somewhat by methane emissions that occur during gas production and transport — but not so much as to sound alarms for Duke University researchers who have studied natural gas and climate change issues.