Much of the public concern about possible water contamination from unconventional oil and gas operations is misdirected, David Blackmon, director of government affairs for El Paso Corp., told a Mayer Brown LLP energy conference in Houston on May 23.

The Texas Railroad Commission and the TRC’s Eagle Ford Task Force plan to study whether existing state regulations on flaring and venting associated with oil and natural gas operations need to be updated, Commissioner David Porter said in a May 23 news release from his Austin office.

Water management will play an increasingly crucial role in energy globally as well as in the US, experts at Deloitte LLP’s 2012 Washington area energy conference forecast on May 21.

Total UK Ltd. said 5 days of close monitoring confirms the success of a May 15 top kill operation on the leaking G4 natural gas well on the Elgin complex, 240 km from Aberdeen in the UK North Sea.

The US Bureau of Land Management’s field office in Pinedale, Wyo., released the first of four groundwater monitoring reports for the Pinedale Anticline. The report aims to address hydrogeologic data gaps.

Total UK Ltd. reported a well intervention operation stopped the G4 well natural gas leak on the Elgin complex in the UK North Sea within 12 hr of when workers started pumping heavy mud into the well.

An independent review of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s draft report on water near Pavillion, Wyo., concluded scientific analysis fails to support EPA’s suggestion that hydraulic fracturing possibly contributed to water contamination, the Independent Petroleum Association of America reported.

Repsol SA continues drilling Cuba’s first offshore oil well as some US government agencies, oil and gas organizations, and environmental groups press to ease restrictions that would keep US companies from responding if the well blows out and sets off a spill, experts at a Center for International Policy seminar said.