BHP set to invest heavily in Shale
Australia-based BHP Billiton LLC said Monday it expects to expand its investment in natural-gas production in Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale by more than $1 bill…
Stories by Paul Quinn
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Yields mixed for state row crops
Extreme weather has left Arkansas’ major row crop yields a mixed bag this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.
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Team told of Shale worries
The Arkansas agencies that regulate the oil and gas industry said Tuesday that they need more inspectors and improved online records to better oversee the indu…
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Flooding cuts hard-drive supply
Historic flooding in Thailand, which makes about 30 percent of the world’s hard drives, will severely reduce supplies of the item that is an essential part of …
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Royalty owner suing driller
A federal lawsuit filed recently in Arkansas accuses Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. of fraudulently underpaying royalty owners for their minerals in the…
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Murphy doubles profit in quarter
Murphy Oil Corp.’s profits doubled in the third quarter compared with its net income from the corresponding quarter in 2010, the El Dorado-based company said i…
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Station to gear TV to blacks
A television network based in Little Rock and geared toward blacks is set to launch in the first quarter of 2012.
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Cabot OK’d to drill in state
Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., which has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars in Pennsylvania after the contamination of water supplies, is jo…
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At LR, adding jobs tied to taxes
More than 60 industry executives, educators and public-policy leaders met in Little Rock on Wednesday to conduct a series of panel discussions on how to create…
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Debt too high for operator of well
A company whose drilling-fluid disposal well was one of four linked to an outbreak of minor earthquakes in the Fayetteville Shale natural-gas formation in Arka…
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Farmers learn to work smarter
When Marianna farmer Nathan Reed was in Rwanda earlier this year, he used his iPhone to check the moisture of his rice in a silo back home.
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LR jobs hinge on U.S. OK
More than 600 jobs in Little Rock hinge on a proposed pipeline that would allow the existing Keystone pipeline to extend from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but…
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Fracking explosion is raising sand
Arkansas is experiencing a mining boom — but it’s not for diamonds or gold. It’s for tiny, perfectly round silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing.
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Agencies applaud flood response
Despite the flooding of millions of rural acres in Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana in April and May, two agencies declared victory Tuesday over the Mississipp…
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Power plant gets 4th threat
For the fourth time in three weeks, a bomb threat has been made at the Southwestern Electric Power Co. John W. Turk Jr. coal-fired power plant under constructi…
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Boozman bill targets farm-dust rule
U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas said Monday that he co-sponsored a bill that would prevent federal regulation of farm dust because greater scientific eviden…
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Gas drilling helps state’s personal income rise 1.3% in quarter
Personal income in Arkansas grew 1.3 percent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of 2011 — 15th-best increase in the country, according to th…
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Delegates mostly frown on Obama’s plan
President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise taxes $1.5 trillion in the next decade didn’t get any endorsements from members of the state’s congressional delegat…
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Shale study meant to scare, critic says
A recent report calling for stricter enforcement of regulations in the Fayetteville Shale misrepresented the facts to scare people, an attorney for the Arkansa…
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3 threats of bombs received at plant
Three bomb threats have been made in the past week at Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s John W. Turk power plant construction site in Hempstead County, prompti…
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Group: Drilling overseer too lax
When a company violates Arkansas water laws, the state Department of Environmental Quality does one of two things — it writes a letter telling the offender to …
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Report blasts gas-industry regulation
A report released Tuesday by a private group that advocates strict regulation of the natural gas industry in Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale said that companies w…
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French firm to invest in Bauxite
This small town was named for the claylike ore from which aluminum is made. Mining of the ore in Saline County started in the 1890s to meet the demand for the …
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Bauxite mine to expand, add 100 jobs, mayor says
A global manufacturing company will invest approximately $100 million to expand its mining operation in Bauxite and add at least 100 jobs, the small city’s may…
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Firm to treat drilling water
A company this fall intends to begin recycling water used in hydraulic fracturing in the Fayetteville Shale. Most of it will be sold back to the companies that…
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Noise rule OK’d for natural gas units
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission approved a rule that will limit the amount of noise a natural-gas compressor station emits.
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Review of rules on shale is urged
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission will hear a request at its Aug. 23 meeting that it should participate in an independent review of the state’s hydraulic-fra…
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Agency denies gas-well claims
The Department of Justice has denied claims in a federal court lawsuit alleging that government agencies did not give adequate public notice that the number of…
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Grass sets off kudzu alarms
State officials are concerned that a new biofuel grass to be planted in northeast Arkansas could spread like kudzu and destroy crops such as rice and soybeans.
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Firm to tap oil field in 2 counties
Southwestern Energy Co. of Houston has invested millions of dollars in south Arkansas with plans to drill for oil in the next few months, according to the comp…
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4 disposal wells banned
After two days of testimony, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission voted Wednesday to ban all four natural-gas drilling disposal wells in a 1,150-square-mile are…
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Experts testify on area quakes
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission heard testimony Tuesday from two scientists who said that natural gas drilling wastewater disposal wells are causing earthq…
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Shale-quake hearing today
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission is set to hear evidence today on the possibility that more than a thousand minor earthquakes since September in Faulkner Co…
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Shale-gas longevity a matter of debate
Most industry analysts and geologists knowledgeable about Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale formation expected from the outset that the natural-gas field will be vi…
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Letters debate levels of noise
The public comment period on a proposed Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission rule that would limit the noise level of natural gas compressor stations ended Thursday…
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Mental exam next in locomotive case
The trial of the third and final defendant accused in a conspiracy to heist a 95-ton locomotive from a Union Pacific rail yard in North Little Rock has been de…
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Mineral rights clarified
Because of increased oil and gas leasing in south Arkansas, the state Oil and Gas Commission held an informational meeting here Wednesday to let people know th…
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Deal in rice suits has some in state feeling vindicated
Five days after Germanybased Bayer CropScience agreed to pay up to $750 million to settle lawsuits brought by thousands of rice farmers over contaminating the …
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Firm settles tainted-rice case
A 5-year-old legal battle involving thousands of rice farmers was settled Friday with Germany-based Bayer CropScience agreeing to pay up to $750 million, attor…
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Permanent ban sought on some disposal wells
Recent minor earthquakes in Faulkner County were triggered by natural gas drilling wastewater injected into deep disposal wells, the Arkansas Geological Survey…
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Filing halts sale of plant in town
Minutes before a sawmill in Glenwood was to go up for sale at a foreclosure auction in Murfreesboro on Tuesday, the company’s owners filed for Chapter 11 bankr…
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Natural-gas rule would limit noise
After a bill on the subject died during the 2011 legislative session, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission is proposing a rule to limit the noise level of natur…
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LR suit on Louisiana project is kept alive
A Pulaski County circuit judge Monday denied a motion to dismiss a case involving $39 million in bonds and notes for a 550-acre development in Livingston Paris…
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Factory in NLR star of meeting
Caterpillar Inc. announced Wednesday that it would boost its quarterly dividend 4.5 percent and reaffirmed its outlook for the year — the same day the world’s …
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Manufacturing helps state GDP add 2.3% in ’10
Arkansas’ economy grew 2.3 percent in 2010, the first full year that the state’s economy was out of a recession it entered in 2008, according to the U.S. Burea…
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Smackover ready for do-over?
Oil companies are snatching up mineral rights on thousands of acres in the old Smackover oil field, which has yielded little since its boom days in the 1920s a…
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Kroger expands gasoline program
Kroger on Wednesday expanded its gasoline-discount program by offering as much as $1 a gallon off per monthly fill-up.
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Court: SWEPCO plant foes misfire
Opponents of a $2.1 billion coal-fired power plant in Hempstead County should have appealed to state regulators before introducing state-law claims into a fede…
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Browning’s long sleep near an end
When Browning’s Mexican Grill closed last summer, devotees thought they were just waiting out a siesta.
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Wells shutdown extended to July
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission and two companies have agreed that the three-month shutdown of two natural-gas fluid-disposal wells in Faulkner County will…
