Shale Daily

Activity in the Marcellus Shale hasn’t declined even in the face of weak natural gas prices, a Williams Cos. executive said Thursday.

Shale plays figured prominently in the third quarter performance of Denver-based QEP Resources as the company grew production by about 20% from the year-ago period.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell signed into law Wednesday legislation reducing the amount of roll-back tax that owners of farmland must pay when leasing land and mineral rights for natural gas development.

An official with a major New York-based environmental advocacy group said he supports the practice of hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) in the production of shale gas, and believes it can be done safely, despite what critics claim.

The United States has become a “surplus natural gas producing country essentially forever” because of shale gas, Credit Suisse analyst Edward Morse said recently.

Marking a U-turn of sorts in the company’s exploration and production strategy due to low natural gas prices and a premium on liquids prices, Range Resources Corp. in its 3Q2010 earnings call put its Barnett Shale properties in Texas on the block and announced that it plans to focus on its “liquids-rich plays” in the Marcellus Shale.

Even with three days of flat to much stronger pricing Monday through Wednesday, only Marcellus Shale numbers in northeast Pennsylvania were able to eke out a small gain during the week ending Thursday. Other plays fell 6-12 cents during that period.

ExxonMobil Corp. in July quietly purchased more acreage in the Haynesville/Bossier Shale, a company executive disclosed Thursday.

Just two days after Gov. Ed Rendell placed a moratorium on drilling on state forest land, Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced a new policy requiring well operators working on state park and forest land to identify all areas of their tracts that will be disturbed by development activities.