Keystone Energy Forum

Profits for the biggest U.S. energy producers including Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) are poised to decline the most since the financial meltdown of 2008-09 as the drilling technique known as fracking collapses natural gas prices.

At a workshop this week, American Petroleum Institute reviewed recommended practices for hydraulic fracturing in Charleston.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. says its new system for treating wastewater from gas wells in eastern Ohio can dramatically reduce the amount of brine going into injection wells for disposal.

"If you look at the top 10 things impacting water in Pennsylvania right now, the gas industry would not be on the list, and certainly not fracking". Why? Because the Keystone State has devised a system of environmental-protection regulations that actually works:

The EPA in no way contends that a draft report on groundwater pollution in Wyoming could apply to hydraulic fracturing in any other part of the U.S., an EPA official told a U.S. House subcommittee - including the Marcellus Shale and shale areas in other northeastern region.

Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia are trying to top each other with the sweetest package of tax breaks for Shell Oil Co., which plans to build a huge new petrochemical refinery in the region.

Low natural gas prices aren't bad for everyone. A few other industries are seeing enormous boosts with cheap, readily available natural gas.

Forbes sets the record straight with facts about fracking, not playing on emotion like many of the frac-tivists do.

For the third year in a row energy played a central role in President Obama's State of the Union address, with the president leaning hard this year on the twin themes of increased domestic oil and gas production and the need to invest more in renewable sources.

A multibillion-dollar ethane cracker plant would bring hundreds of direct chemical jobs to West Virginia or Ohio and up to seven times as many related jobs, which has both states offering large tax incentives for the plant.