An explosion of natural gas from shale is swamping the market with an abundance of new gas, upsetting investment models for LNG terminals and making gas cost-competitive with coal. More at The Hill.

Lots of people have leased their acreage for potential gas drilling and are curious about how much their royalties might amount to. We now have a tool to estimate gas royalty income based upon a few assumptions. You just type in your royalty rate, an assumed natural gas wellhead price, an assumed well production rate, the number of acres in the production unit and the number of production unit acres that belong to you – then push a button.

A Catholic cemetery association has leased over 1000 acres of land giving Huntley & Huntley a five year option to drill for natural gas. More at the Lebanon Daily News.

Who owns the mineral rights beneath your property? That can determine what drilling companies can do and what rights a landowner has when drilling begins. More in an article on the ArkTimes.com website.

Drillers are now starting fewer wells – but those wells are a lot more expensive. State revenues from natural gas drilling are increasing. Electric utilities are switching from coal to gas. An article at Herald-Dispatch explores these and more.

BusinessWeek.com.When an oil or gas well is drilled it withdraws fluids from beneath lands surrounding the well. This gets more complicated when a well is deviated to horizontal below the ground and penetrates beneath many land parcels. Pennsylvania might have a bill this fall that requires groups of landowners to enter into certain extraction / compensation arrangements even if some do not agree. More at

Marcellus Shale landowners challenged Range Resources on deducing transportation and processing costs from the production value of natural gas before making royalty payments. More at OilPrice.com.

A member of the Pennsylvania State Senate is concerned that gas companies might receive the ability to force landowners into “pools” as part of the proposed severance tax bill. More at The Times Tribune.

The Indian government is preparing to hold their first auction of gas shale properties in August 2011. More in an article on the Business-Standard.com website.

A few landowner associations in Texas reached agreements with large natural gas producers in early 2008 but the producers never delivered leases to individual landowners. Now the landowners are organizing for a court challenge. More in the Star Telegram.

The US government plans to have a study done to determine if they are not getting their fair share when they lease land for oil and gas drilling. They are going to compare their royalty rates with amounts received by other governments. More at TheHill.

This video describes President Obama’s offshore drilling plan that will open certain Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico waters to oil and gas drilling.

A group of property owners in Pennsylvania signed early leases for their Marcellus Shale gas properties then tried to wiggle out were foiled by a unanimous decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. More in the Washington Post.

A free webinar titled: “The Impact of Marcellus Shale: What Do the Economic Impact Studies Imply?” is scheduled for Thursday, March 18th at 1:00 PM and hosted by the Penn State Cooperative Extension. You can register on their website.

An article in the Houston Chronicle explores why major oil companies have taken an interest in natural gas shales. Part of the reason is that the resource has a long lifetime.