Shale Daily

The first of 16 methane emissions studies focusing on unconventional natural gas production and organized by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has been published and says that industry efforts to control emissions at well sites are having a significant impact.

A nonprofit energy aggregator that supplies natural gas to more than 250,000 customers in Northeast Ohio has signed a six-year contract to purchase gas produced from the Marcellus and Utica shales.

FERC Thursday approved Tallgrass Interstate Gas Transmission LLC’s (previously Kinder Morgan Interstate Gas Transmission LLC) proposal to sell a 432-mile mainline segment to affiliate Tallgrass Pony Express for the purpose of converting it to transport crude oil from the Bakken and Denver-Julesburg/Niobrara shales.

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), which has played a key role in the de facto moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the basin, will soon begin a search for a new executive director, following Carol Collier’s announcement Thursday that she will retire March 12, 2014.

A state lawmaker in Pennsylvania has introduced a bill that would require operators to submit monthly production reports, giving landowners more information to ensure that they are receiving accurate royalty payments.

The outlook for global independents is looking good, particularly for oil-focused operators, but headwinds still persist for the smaller sector of North America’s oilfield services providers, where a plethora of providers is chasing limited new demand, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

With the exception of some flattening in the overall oil and natural gas rig count this year, a steady increase is forecast through 2015, particularly for horizontals drilled on multi-pad well sites, according to Halliburton Co. COO Jeff Miller.

In a broader global energy picture that is a “smorgasbord of fragmented pieces,” the United States is headed for a return to gas-on-gas competition among shale-dominated natural gas basins, according to Jim Duncan, ConocoPhillips chief analyst and commodity market strategist in Houston.

With proper regulation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shale gas operations should represent only a small part of the total carbon footprint of shale gas and would fall within the nontraded sector of the United Kingdom’s carbon budgets, according to the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC).