Shale Daily

Although brutally cold weather across much of the country is driving up natural gas delivery costs for utility companies, particularly those in the Northeast, increased production in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations has continued to push down the price customers are paying for the commodity this year as more utilities utilize local gas produced in the Appalachian Basin.

Improving well performance has Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN) expecting to extract 244-249 Bcf from the Marcellus Shale next year, a 60% increase compared with an estimated 148-149 Bcf this year, the company said Tuesday.

Dallas City Council members on Wednesday afternoon voted to increase natural gas well setbacks from housing from 300 feet to 1,500 feet as part of a drilling ordinance proposed by the Dallas City Plan Commission (CPC) and favored by residents opposed to drilling within the city limits.

Regardless over how the New York Court of Appeals rules in a pair of cases on localities’ power to enact bans on oil and gas activities, the state legislature will insert itself into the debate at some point in the future, a former state official said Wednesday.

The Cooper Basin in Australia, Argentina’s Neuquen Basin and two formations in Turkey are the best prospects today for global unconventional production based on their geology, market access/pricing and regulatory schemes, according to an analysis by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).

Marathon Oil Corp. will spend more than half of its global capital next year in North American resource shale plays, with the rig count in both the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales increasing by 20%, and twice as many rigs working Oklahoma’s Woodford Shale.

Nearly nine months after he was appointed to serve as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Christopher Abruzzo has been appointed by the state senate 42-8. In March Republican Gov. Tom Corbett appointed Abruzzo, who was supposed to take the helm of the oil and gas regulatory agency in April, but some Democrats were angered by the appointment of a longtime government attorney who didn’t appear to share some of their environmental views. Most recently, Abruzzo served as deputy chief of staff for Corbett.

Natural gas production from the “Other States” category was down compared to the previous month for only the second time in nine months, but total U.S. natural gas production, which has of late been buoyed by that shale gas-rich category, still managed a 0.3% increase in September, according to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Natural Gas Gross Production Report.

Dominion made good on a promise to farm out some of its extensive natural gas-rich land in West Virginia and to carry more gas to outside markets under key agreements announced Tuesday.