Recent News
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Group hopes drilling facts may calm North Fork fears
A local organization of top level officials from government and industry, along with private citizens, is planning a public forum event aimed at correcting bad information and unfounded fears surrounding the BLM’s planned August gas lease sale in the North Fork Valley. The organization, known as the Natural Gas Collaborative [...]
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Pickens: Cut drilling to boost gas price
Energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens on Wednesday argued that the only way to bolster US natural gas prices and cut the market’s massive oversupply is to stop drilling, according to a report. Pickens, 83, an outspoken champion of using natural gas for transport, made the comments after his company Clean [...]
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Corbett reasserts position on drilling consistency
Gov. Tom Corbett is reinforcing his position that local rules for natural-gas drillers need to be more uniform across the state, and now is speaking favorably of the proposal to do so that passed the House and Senate late last year. With lawmakers aiming to vote on a compromise Marcellus [...]
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Booming production pushes natural gas price down
The price of natural gas dropped back to near a 10-year low Wednesday after Exxon Mobil and other energy companies declined to cut production. Exxon, America’s biggest natural gas producer, has led a push by major industry players into U.S. gas drilling over the past few years that has boosted [...]
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Landowners fight pipeline co.’s eminent domain land grab in Pa.’s Marcellus Shale gas field
When federal regulators approved a 39-mile natural gas pipeline through northern Pennsylvania’s pristine Endless Mountains, they cited the operator’s assurances that it would make sparing use of eminent domain as it negotiated with more than 150 property owners along the pipeline’s route. Yet a few days after winning approval for [...]
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Marcellus Shale natural gas pipeline project in doubt
A $520 million pipeline project thought to have the potential to support 2,500 Ohio construction jobs may be dead. The Ohio Power Siting Board, the body that regulates major utility projects in Ohio, rejected the application for the Marcellus Lateral Pipeline more than a year ago. Kinder Morgan, a pipeline [...]
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Marcellus Shale gas-drilling company says EPA used faulty pollution data
In the latest salvo over Marcellus Shale gas drilling in the embattled town of Dimock, a natural gas company on Tuesday alleged that federal regulators had cherry-picked old test data to distort the amount of contamination in drinking-water wells. Cabot Oil & Gas Co., whose drilling was blamed for the [...]
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Arlington council rejects Chesapeake drilling site in Rush Creek area
After city leaders twice rejected their proposed Rush Creek drill site in southwest Arlington, Chesapeake Energy officials said it is unlikely that they will find an acceptable site where all 2,600 lease-holders can earn royalties. After a lengthy public hearing Tuesday, the Arlington City Council voted 7-1 to deny Chesapeake’s [...]
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Natural gas driller: No action anytime soon in Steuben area
Drilling in the Marcellus Shale is not likely to happen any time soon, according to a Three Rivers Development Foundation official. Tom Wilber, the director of Three Rivers’ Energy Services said one key reason for a delay in drilling is the cost of natural gas is at a 10-year low. [...]
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Fracking disclosures are now required in Texas
A new Texas Railroad Commission rule requiring oil and natural gas operators to publicly disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil wells takes effect Wednesday. The rule also requires that operators disclose how much water is used in fracking, a process that may require 1 [...]
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Surface owners can acquire rights to minerals under their property
As oil and gas companies have announced their intent to drill in southeastern Illinois in recent months, many in our area have taken an newfound interest in mineral rights issues. Of particular interest is the issue of severed mineral rights, those whose owner is different than the surface owner. Some [...]
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State should get full value for mineral
The mineral rights owned by the state of North Dakota belong to its citizens. When royalties from oil produced from state mineral rights are less than that from surrounding private holdings, it’s the people of the state who are shortchanged. And because those royalties go into a trust fund for [...]
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Obama’s backing of shale gas aimed at voters in Marcellus region
President Barack Obama’s early valentine to the natural gas industry in his State of the Union address Tuesday spurred activist anxiety and industry infatuation, but the lengthy section dedicated to domestic energy was also an appeal to the millions of voters living above the Marcellus Shale formation. Sure, the Middle [...]
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Devon focuses Barnett drilling on liquids
Devon Energy Corp., the biggest producer in the Barnett Shale, doesn’t plan to follow in Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s footsteps when it comes to Chesapeake’s recent decision to curtail drilling in North Texas. Chesapeake (NYSE: CHK) announced last week that it had reduced drilling from 13 rigs to six rigs in [...]
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Continental Rises on Higher Production, Reserves
Continental Resources Inc., the biggest petroleum leaseholder in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale field, gained the most in more than two years after reporting production increased 57 percent and reserves grew 39 percent. Continental rose 11 percent to $82.47 at the close in New York, the highest price since the shares [...]
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Shift to natural gas coming for U.S., Kinder Morgan CEO says
Kinder Morgan, the largest independent transporter of petroleum products in the U.S., is planning its pipeline growth around an inevitable shift to natural gas in the U.S., CEO Richard Kinder said Wednesday. Kinder, who spoke at the company’s annual analyst conference, said despite low natural gas prices, a tremendous amount of [...]
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Gas drillers, Idaho counties reach agreement
A group representing Idaho counties and a group representing companies interested in tapping natural gas in the state announced an agreement Sunday on legislation they plan to introduce into the Idaho Legislature next month. The Idaho Association of Counties and the Idaho Petroleum Council said the guidelines will allow counties [...]
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Bill would support fracking in South Dakota
State lawmakers want energy developers to know that hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method of recovering oil and gas from subsurface shale, is welcome in South Dakota. A single-paragraph bill introduced Wednesday in the House of Representatives would provide that fracking, as the practice is known, “is deemed an acceptable recovery [...]
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Role of federal government in natural gas boom debated
President Barack Obama’s embrace of natural gas this week came with a claim that the federal government is at least partly responsible for the abundant supply brought to market in recent years. “And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop [...]
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Oil, gas industry opposes use of word ‘fracking’ for method
A different kind of F-word is stirring a linguistic and political debate as controversial as what it defines. The word is “fracking” — as in hydraulic fracturing, a technique long used by the oil and gas industry to free oil and gas from rock. It’s not in the dictionary, the [...]
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Eagle Ford Shale no threat to water supply
The Eagle Ford Task Force has concluded that one of the state’s largest aquifers has enough water to support oil and gas drilling activities, as well as other projected uses. The 26-member task force, appointed by Texas Railroad Commissioner David Porter, said on Thursday the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer will not [...]
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Obama’s 600,000 Fracking-Job Forecast Includes Lawyers, Realtors
The boom in natural gas produced from shale rock will add U.S. jobs, though whether it supports as many as President Barack Obama predicts depends on how you count them, economists say. In his State of the Union address this week, Obama said hydraulic fracturing, in which a mix of [...]
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Oil production is booming — but for how long?
Lately, President Obama has been talking up the frenzy of domestic oil drilling under his watch. “Right now,” the president said in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, “American oil production is the highest it’s been in eight years.” Technically, that’s true. But it’s worth taking a longer [...]
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Harold Hamm: President Obama’s State of the Union Missing Key Part in Energy Exploration
In President Obama’s State of the Union Address, he announced his support for hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for natural gas. Obama said this form of energy development could create 600,000 jobs. Noting fracking could unearth and capture nearly a one hundred year of supply of natural gas for the country, [...]
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ConocoPhillips to lease oil and gas rights at Lowry for $137M
ConocoPhillips has signed a tentative agreement with the Colorado State Land Board to lease oil and natural gas mineral rights at the old Lowry bombing range east of Aurora for $137 million, or about $6,500 per acre, plus a royalty, land board director Bill Ryan said Friday. If the deal [...]
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