In its rapid ascent to become a top leaseholder in the Marcellus Shale, Chesapeake Energy came to West Virginia and put into play a strategy designed to narrow landowner rights and expand company control over all phases of the drilling cycle.

The Oklahoma City-based energy giant absorbed the region -- which sits above the natural gas rock formation -- in just a few months, driving down landowners' bargaining power, and in some cases preventing leases from expiring, locking landowners into those contracts indefinitely. Read more »

The head of OPEC said Wednesday December 7,2011 that speculators are at least partly to blame for high oil prices -- not any lack of supply on world markets.

Speaking at a World Petroleum Congress panel, OPEC Secretary General Abdulla Salem El Badri said the world has plenty of crude but that the number of barrels of oil changing hands in the financial markets is 35 times greater than the actual supply.

The numbers he cited were 3 billion barrels per day traded on global exchanges, but only 76 million barrels per day in actual supply. Read more »

Valley job experts say the new pipe finishing plant at the former Sheet and Tube building in Youngstown is only one example of ancillary industrial business that a Marcellus Shale boom will bring.

The new plant, announced Monday December 5, 2011, is being opened by V&M Star sister company VAM USA, a Houston-based Vallourec subsidiary that manufactures casing and tubing connections for the American oil and gas industry. VAM has three other such plants located in oil country cities like Houston, Houma, La., and Oklahoma City. Read more »

Exploration of mineral deposits in Afghanistan could begin as early as 2015 after Afghan mining ministry officials said new development rights were awarded.

A consortium of Indian companies led by state-owned Steel Authority of India landed a $10.3 billion deal for three mining sites in central Afghanistan, the BBC reports.

U.S. defense officials estimated in 2010 that there could be as much as $1 trillion worth of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium in Afghanistan. Read more »