oil and gas

On February 7, the Bureau of Land Management, Wyoming State Office (WSO) vacated its approval of an oil and gas well and associated pipelines within Jonah Energy's Normally Pressured Lance (NPL) project in western Wyoming. The WSO remanded its decisions back to the local field office.

Last year, the Wyoming legislature passed a bill called "New opportunities for Wyoming coal fired generation" requiring any utility retiring a coal plant earlier than scheduled would make a good faith effort to find a buyer.

Through the interim, legislators have been putting together a bill that would lay the groundwork for that to happen.

Adjusted for inflation, the natural gas spot price dropped to its lowest point in the shale revolution era. Fracking and horizontal drilling revolutionized the industry a decade ago, but the success has also cost producers with now record low prices hitting $1.77/million BTU today.

The Trump Administration is looking at removing environmental review requirements from public land-use plans. The possible changes by the Bureau of Land Management is one of several suggestions in a document obtained by Bloomberg News.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements have long been part of land-use planning as the Bureau of Land Management balances energy production and conservation. Any plan must include a finalized environmental impact statement.

The Trump Administration has proposed comprehensive updates to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which oversees NEPA implementation, they would the biggest changes made in over 40 years.

NEPA, established in 1970, requires all federally-related developments to show what environmental impacts they will have. There are three types of reviews: Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), Environmental Assessments (EA), and Categorical Exclusions (CE).

Samson Energy Company held an outreach meeting Tuesday night as it moves to start drilling 10 to 15 new wells east of Cheyenne as soon as April.

The closest development would be more 1,000 feet from anyone's home, according to the company. Wyoming mandates that development occur at least 500 feet from an occupied structure.

Preliminary data shows U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.1 percent in 2019 following a spike in 2018.

A report put together by the Rhodium Group, an independent research provider, estimates emissions actually increased in nearly every sector except for the energy industry.

Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) confirmed its 2016 findings that Pavillion, Wyoming's groundwater contamination is not connected to oil and gas activity.

It released a 4,228 page report Monday that dug into questions remaining from the previous version in 2016. The department used improved technology to dive into its past findings and ensure there wasn't some critical compound or bacteria missed.

Cheyenne homeowners are raising concerns about a proposed oil and gas development that would drill close to the city.

Samson Energy Company acquired land this month where it hopes to drill 10 to 15 wells starting as soon as April of next year.

Hours into a meeting of the Select Committee on Coal/Mineral Bankruptcies, Chairman Eric Barlow brought up a draft bill called "Protested Tax Payments." With little pause, Barlow welcomed in the day's regular testifiers.

The Mozambican government is looking to develop business partnerships with the city of Powell and in the Bighorn Basin.

Nearly three dozen Wyoming landowners are suing Occidental Petroleum Corporation and its recently acquired company Anadarko Petroleum Corporation alleging they monopolized both the oil and gas market and the leasing rights in Laramie County. Occidental Petroleum acquired Anadarko this year in a deal valued at $55 billion and is in the process of finalizing the sale.

Natural gas producers in Wyoming are facing a dramatic new normal as prices drop and supply explodes. The state Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) report estimates natural gas production is falling at similar levels to coal projected to be down nearly 40 percent this year from 2009.

Gov. Mark Gordon announced an effort called Power Wyoming this week to study new revenue scenarios for Wyoming. The group presented data to the legislature's Joint Revenue Committee showing the state can no longer rely on revenues from the energy industry.

Judge Scott Skavdahl for the United States District Court, District of Wyoming has placed an injunction on part of the Obama-era valuation rule. That rule was intended to update how royalties are calculated from energy production on federal and native land with the goal of giving a fair price to taxpayers.

Over the last few years, oil production has spiked in the U.S., with help from states such as Wyoming and Colorado. And the boom brought a nearly 50 percent increase in natural gas flaring between 2017 and 2018, according to the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, which is managed by the World Bank.

An outdated regulation within the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is allowing the majority of oil and gas operators on federal land to put down money for clean-up that doesn't reflect actual cost; that's according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Trump Administration is looking to change Obama-era national air quality standards for the oil and gas industry that limited methane - a pollutant considered the second largest contributor to climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed changes Thursday to the 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), influenced at the time by Wyoming's regulations.

Amid coal bankruptcies, increasingly cost-efficient oil and gas companies, and a trade war underway, the energy sector has dropped to its lowest share of the S & P 500 in a long time. S & P 500 is an index of major companies that represent the U.S. stock market.