The past few months have brought considerable headwinds, including an SEC investigation and shareholder lawsuit, Chesapeake Energy remains confident that its future is bright.

Some dozen private-equity fund companies that invest in energy--oil and gas, services and midstream-- are wearing out the shoe leather, raising new capital this year.

For upstream and midstream, panelists cite about $30 billion of available capacity to the investor.

Enormous volumes of gas and natural gas liquids produced from horizontal wells have blown open the doors to the midstream world, new players and new capital are rushing in.

Officials from Williams Partners and Caiman Energy discussed the sale of Caiman's Marcellus midstream assets to Williams along with their joint venture in the Utica shale at this week's Hart Energy Marcellus Midstream conference.

DCP Midstream Partners LP is seeking to leverage its strength as the top NGL producer to reposition the company from being gathering- and processing- centric to being a full NGL value chain midstream service provider.

Chesapeake Midstream Partners officials are confident that the company will meet its 2012 outlook and capital spending despite the decision by Chesapeake Energy to curtail its gross natural gas production.

Shell CEO said industry has the talent, the experience, and the capability to ‘do the job right.’

“The first acquisition is very important,” Bob Firth, president of Caballo Energy LLC, told Midstream Monitor when discussing Caballo’s recent acquisition of Eagle Chief Midstream LLC.

Southwestern Energy Co’s hedging program, combined with a strong midstream division, will ensure that its cash flow is protected from turbulent prices and weather in 2012.

Natural gas production should remain at roughly the same level as in 2011, but there could be a pullback by producers in 2013 because of the continued decline in the forward pricing curve, according to Barclays Capital.

Driven by surging natural gas consumption in Asia and the United States, global use of this form of fossil fuel rebounded 7.4% from its 2009 slump to hit a record 111.9 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2010, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute.

A drop in natural gas prices has less of an effect on the average producer than would have been the case in 2010,” Barclays Capital said in a recent Gas and Power Weekly Kaleidoscope.

Even though the oil-to-gas price ratio has widened, and gas volumes have not fallen off despite rig redeployments to oily plays, it hasn't been hard to find contrarian investors willing to buy gas now.

Energy-company stocks capture investor attention despite year-end portfolio distractions.