An article at Platts.com reports on the 17-person emergency response team that will be located in Pennsylvania to respond to natural gas well emergencies.

Halliburton has done the first hydraulic fracturing job in Poland for PGNiG – the government’s oil and gas company. More at Reuters.com.

“Since March 2009, the premium for natural gas liquids over the price of natural gas has grown. NGLs, which include propane, ethane, butane, pentane and natural gasoline, are produced in conjunction with natural gas, and the quantity of liquids varies from basin to basin and often from well to well. To take advantage of the NGL price premiums, producers are now seeking out liquid-rich shale plays—such as the Eagle Ford and the Marcellus.” Quoted from the EIA Natural Gas Update.

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

Falling natural gas prices and an abundance of local production could result in significant rate cuts for lots of residential gas customers who live near developing gas fields. Customers of UGI Utilities, located in Reading, Pennsylvania could pay 16.3% less for their gas next winter.

LNG or liquefied natural gas is natural gas that has been temporarily converted into a liquid. This is done to save space – 610 cubic feet of natural gas can be converted into a single cubic foot of LNG. Converting natural gas into LNG makes it easier to store and easier to transport where pipelines are not available. More at Geology.com.

Lafayette, Louisiana will start converting its fleet of buses and public works vehicles to natural gas. Much of that gas will likely come from the Haynesville Shale. More at the Daily Comet.

Newsweek has an article “Shale Gas: Hope for Our Energy Future” which is interesting… but for some readers the gem of the article might be the historical details about how the horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing methods were first applied to shale

Chesapeake Energy says that they are cutting back their efforts in the Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas and that will enable them to focus on plays where natural gas liquids make important contributions to income. More at TheCityWire.com.

“Despite a sharp decline in Henry Hub spot prices from the levels reached in the summer of 2008, natural gas production in the Barnett shale in Texas continued to climb through the middle of 2009 and appears to have reached an undulating plateau since then. Production growth in the Barnett shale comes from several large natural gas producers who continued to maintain strong production even in an environment of relatively low natural gas prices.” Quoted from the Energy Information Administration’s Natural Gas Update.

The New York Senate passed a bill that will further delay the approval of permits for drilling the Marcellus Shale. The state assembly and the governor must approve before it would go into effect. More at Reuters.

Westmont Resources Inc. will acquire 92 wells in the Chattanooga Shale of Scott County and Morgan County, Tennessee that are presently owned by Domestic Energy Corp. This announcement reveals some information about the Chattanooga and the wells that have been drilled. More at the Oil and Gas Journal.

The price of natural gas is not uniform across the United States. Instead, the price is determined by supply, demand, proximity to production, regulatory environments and the cost of natural gas that is flowing in the local distribution system. More at Geology.com.

Natural gas is used in an amazing number of ways. Although it is widely seen as a cooking and heating fuel in most US households, natural gas has many other energy and raw material uses that are a surprise to most people who learn about them. More in an article at Geology.com.

An article on Reuters.com reports that the bill to provide rebates to buyers of natural gas vehicles has provisions that require drilling companies to share the chemistry of their hydrofracturing fluids.