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Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission LP is holding a nonbinding open season through July 31 for firm capacity on its Uniontown to Gas City (U2GC) Expansion Project, which offers shippers a new firm path from the Marcellus Shale in west Uniontown, PA, to the pipeline’s existing interconnect with Panhandle Eastern Pipeline near Gas City, IN.

Houston-based Vanguard Natural Resources LLC has closed on its acquisition of natural gas and liquids assets in the Arkoma Basin from Antero Resources for an adjusted price of $434.4 million, subject to post-closing adjustments. The effective date is April 1, 2012. The deal was announced early last month (see Shale Daily, June 5). Vanguard funded the acquisition with borrowings under its existing reserve-based credit facility. The borrowing base was increased from $670 million to $975 million in connection with an interim borrowing base redetermination to include the properties from the acquisition. Updated 2012 production and financial results guidance will be included with second quarter results, which are expected to be released on Aug. 2.

One of the newer, smaller wildfires raging in Colorado sparked concerns Thursday about natural gas exploration and production (E&P) activities along the Western Slope in the Piceance Basin, but industry sources said there was no cause for alarm among citizens or fire-fighting officials. Any dangers are minimal because facilities can be shut in with the push of a button, an oil and gas official said.

Calgary-based Talisman Energy is abandoning a project it had considered with Sasol Canada to develop Canada’s first gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility to create transportation fuels from natural gas.

Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission LP is proposing a pipeline expansion project to carry natural gas produced in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas across the Mexican border.

Institutional investor groups representing trillions of dollars in assets have called on the oil and natural gas industry to use best practice control technologies to reduce global methane emissions from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of unconventional wells.

Beginning July 1 producers that use hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on wells in Oklahoma will be required to disclose the contents of the frack fluids they use, save for those contents that are deemed to be trade secrets. The regulations adopted earlier this year by state lawmakers and enacted by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) are similar to those in other states.

Japanese chemical manufacturer Kuraray Co. Ltd. announced Tuesday that it plans to take advantage of an abundance of shale gas in the United States and will build a $10.1 million facility in Texas to produce plastic.

Even if all drilling rigs were removed from the northern Marcellus Shale region and current drilling ceased, dry gas production in northeastern Pennsylvania would continue growing for 16 months, thanks to a large inventory of nonproducing wells and high initial production (IP) rates, Bentek Energy LLC said in a market note. “In fact, if zero rigs were operating there, production could still grow from approximately 4.1 Bcf/d today to 5.4 Bcf/d by September 2013, a 31% increase that results exclusively from working off the existing backlog of 1,000 nonproducing wells in the region,” the firm said. The assumptions in its analysis are that the 12-month average completion rate is carried forward and the average IP rate in the area is 6,500 Mcf/d. A “typical” Marcellus decline curve is also assumed. Potential pipeline capacity constraints were not included in the analysis.