Last week I attended the State Bar Annual Advanced Oil, Gas and Energy Law Conference in Houston. This year is the 75th anniversary of the Oil, Gas and Energy Section of the Texas Bar (older than the State Bar itself), and there was a special dinner to honor the occasion,…
A report recently released by the University of Texas’ Cockrell School of Engineering, “Measurements of methane emissions at natural gas production sites in the United States,” has re-energized the debate between industry and environmental groups over whether natural gas is good for the environment. UT’s report is a peer-reviewed paper…
I subscribe to the Economist, and it recently sent its subscribers a booklet, Pocket World in Figures, that contains rankings of 198 countries in categories ranging from longest river to biggest cities to number of refugees to living standards, etc. Here are some interesting statistics related to energy from that…
The historic floods in Colorado have inundated hundreds of oil and gas wells, dislodging tanks and threatening significant pollution of the flood water. The disaster has raised questions across the country about regulation of drillsite locations in areas that could be subject to flooding. The Colorado Oil and Gas…
Texas pumped 2.575 million barrels of oil per day in June, exceeding Iran’s production of 2.56 million barrels/day. Texas now ranks ahead of seven members of OPEC in oil production. The U.S. is now the world’s largest exporter of refined fuels, including gasoline and diesel. The U.S. met 87 percent of…
The Texas Railroad Commissioners voted unanimously today to reject the recommendation of its examiners denying EOG’s allocation well permit and instructed the examiners to prepare an order and findings granting EOG’s permit. For my prior posts about this case, see here, here and here.
Julia Trigg Crawford has waged a well-publicized fight to prevent condemnation of an easement across her farm for the XL Keystone Pipeline. On August 27, the 6th Court of Appeals in Texarkana denied her appeal of TransCanada Keystone Pipeline’s award of an easement over her property. Crawford has vowed to…
I subscribe to a news clip service on the oil and gas industry, where I get a lot of my ideas for this blog. Almost half of the news stories for August 20 had something to do with hydraulic fracturing (“fracing” or “fracking” – the latter spelling seems to have become…
Some big horizontal wells have begun producing in Zavala County from the Buda formation (below the Eagle Ford) that may open up Zavala County for additional wells comparable to the best Eagle Ford Wells. This Hughes well, now having a history of production for a year, shows no sign of…
Here is the Washington Post’s review of Josh Fox’s sequel documentary Gasland Part II, recently shown on HBO. I’ve previously written about Fox’s controversial criticisms of hydraulic fracturing, including a “counter-documentary” called FrackNation. In following news coverage of the growth of shale exploration and development in the popular media, I have…