Texas royalty owners should get to know the website, FracFocus. This website provides a list of chemicals and other ingredients in fluids used by oil and gas well operators for hydraulic fracturing of wells both in Texas and across the country. The intent of the website is to allow the…
In April 2013. representatives in the US House of Representatives announced that bipartisan legislation would be introduced in 2014 to take out corn based ethanol requirements in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard The bill is called the Renewable Fuel Standard Reform Act. Those involved in the oil and gas industry…
The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee has held at least five meetings in the last two years on the problem of federal oil and gas regulations overlapping with existing state regulations. The Committee’s chairman, Representative Doc Hastings, had a common sense solution to this confusion: “There is a…
Due to increasingly onerous regulations, oil and gas industry associations have filed suit in federal court over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) planned regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants and vehicles. The regulations come from a 2009 EPA finding that greenhouse gases pose a public health threat- the so-called…
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board, recently announced the creation of a new panel on hydraulic fracturing, generally referred to as “fracing”. The formation of the panel comes as the Obama administration is working to revise draft rules for fracing. With new technologies like fracing leading to historic…
Recently the IHS hosted CERAWeek in Houston, Texas (you can view the brochure here). CERA stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an organization founded in the early 1980s to consult on energy issues for both the government and private companies, and that hosts the annual event in Houston each year.…
The University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology recently released a new study, entitled the Sloan Foundation Shale Gas Assessment Study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, predicting a reliable, although decreasing, supply of natural gas from the Barnett shale until 2030. Barnett shale is the country’s…
Forecasts for the oil and gas markets for 2014 were released recently. They predict a somewhat loose market, along with more positive news for those involved in the North American oil and gas industry. These projections were published in the “Short-Term Energy Outlook”, a document produced by the US Energy…
Oil and gas pipelines in Texas and throughout the country are needed to bring oil and gas to refiners and to markets, and result in cheaper fuel prices for consumers by lowering transportation costs. With the oil and gas industry flourishing, particularly in areas of the country like Texas, more…
In a significant win for reasonable and sensible energy regulation, the DC Circuit Court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2012 cellulosic biofuels projection. It is sad that this is what passes as a “win” for the energy industry however, since the Court simply acknowledged that the EPA’s requirements are…