Shale Daily

The Pennsylvania House on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday separately voted in lame duck sessions to override Gov. Ed Rendell’s veto of an education bill. However, the severance tax on gas drillers that Rendell and some lawmakers had sought for more than two years was never considered.

Newfield Exploration Co. late Monday said it has agreed to buy 50,000 net acres in the Marcellus Shale from EOG Resources Inc. in a transaction valued at $405 million.

The Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance prohibiting natural gas drilling in the city, despite questions about the ordinance’s legality.

Eagle Ford Gathering LLC, a joint venture (JV) of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP and Copano Energy LLC said it will provide services in the Eagle Ford Shale play in South Texas to Chesapeake Energy Marketing Inc. a unit of Chesapeake Energy Corp.

After two years of study, Australian oil and gas exploration and production company AWE Ltd. said it has identified targets within the Perth Basin Shale play that rival the characteristics of some of the productive natural gas shales within the United States, with one interval — the Carynginia Shale — alone holding a gross of 13-20 Tcf in place within AWE’s acreage.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is working on a set of draft rules that would require natural gas producers to submit comprehensive water management plans when they apply to drill horizontal wells in the Marcellus Shale.

As it shifts its portfolio toward more oily prospects, natural gas producer Williams Cos. said Monday it will pay $925 million to acquire 85,800 net acres in the Bakken Shale.

Natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale over the next two decades could impact the state’s forests and alter several thousand acres of habitat, The Nature Conservancy said Monday in a study.

Oil field services provider Halliburton Co. Monday announced that it will publicly disclose fluids used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activities, has set up a website to carry this out, and has introduced a first-of-its-kind ecofriendly fracture fluid system made up of materials sourced entirely from the food industry.