Utica Shale

EV Energy Partners LP (EVEP) and Total E&P USA said Tuesday that they have agreed to sell their interests in Cardinal Gas Services LLC for a combined sale price of $562 million in a deal that is expected to close next month.

PDC Energy Inc. has reached a settlement on a long-standing class action lawsuit with a group of investors, which should allow the company to get out from under legal fees and focus on its nascent core areas in Colorado and Ohio.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has ruled out a shallow injection well in northeast Ohio as the likely cause of a 2.1-magnitude earthquake recorded there last month, lifting a ban on operations and continuing its investigation of a deeper well nearby.

Gastar Exploration Inc. is poised to spend heavily in its Hunton Limestone oil play next year after approving a $257.3 million capital budget that mostly would go toward drilling, completion and infrastructure in Oklahoma.

Rex Energy Corp. plans to put a newly contracted rig to work at the beginning of next year in its Moraine East area in Butler County, PA, which it received in a $120 million deal last month with Royal Dutch Shell plc affiliate SWEPI LP (see Shale Daily, Aug. 13).

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. picked a new business partner for its midstream subsidiary, Eureka Hunter Holdings LLC, in a move that it said Tuesday will create significant savings and more flexibility for its upstream operations.

Ohio activists are continuing to push for referendums to amend city charters that would ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and injection wells, even in areas where little or no oil and gas activity is taking place.

A Pittsburgh-based holding company plans to convert a shuttered cold rolling steel mill in Yorkville, OH, into an industrial services terminal to support oil and gas companies in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

With robust production growth in the Appalachian Basin and extensive infrastructure expansions on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian borders, the Midcontinent and Gulf Coast will be awash in natural gas over the next five years, according to three industry experts who spoke Tuesday at an energy forum in Chicago.