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The University at Buffalo (UB) will close its Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), which during its seven-month life issued a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) study that was the target of criticism from several areas, including some UB staff, university President Satish Tripathi said last week.

The University at Buffalo (UB) will close its Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), which during its seven-month life issued a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) study that was the target of criticism from several areas, including some UB staff, university President Satish Tripathi said Monday.

Ryckman Creek Resources LLC, a unit of Peregrine Midstream Partners LLC, said it received bids for three and a half times the capacity offered during a recent open season for firm gas storage service at its high-deliverability, multi-cycle Ryckman Creek Gas Storage facility in Uinta County, WY. The offer of 8 Bcf of capacity available April 1 received market-priced bids from 23 companies, the company said. The facility began commercial operations last August (see Daily GPI, Aug. 22). “We will now begin working with the top bidders to finalize new firm service agreements that will commence next spring with our initial firm service agreements that we entered into after our first open season two years ago,” said Peregrine COO Jeff Foutch.

The average natural gas customer’s bill might rise 7% during the upcoming 2012-2013 heating season due to colder weather than last winter, said the American Gas Association (AGA) Thursday.

Constellation Energy Partners LLC (CEP) said Monday it’s looking for a buyer for its natural gas-heavy Black Warrior Basin properties in Tuscaloosa County, AL.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has received requests from citizens, oil and gas companies and local officials to review the drilling ordinances of three of the five localities in southwestern Pennsylvania that have filed a legal challenge to Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Enbridge Inc. has committed up to $600 million to expand Enbridge Gas Distribution’s (EGD) system in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) during 2014 and 2015, pending approval of the Ontario Energy Board. “Over the last 20 years, Enbridge Gas Distribution has almost doubled its total number of customers across Ontario from 1.1 million in 1992 to 2 million in 2012,” said President Guy Jarvis. “We’re well positioned to benefit from continued strong population growth in the GTA…” The proposed project would consist of two segments of pipeline and related facilities to upgrade the distribution system that delivers gas to Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Markham.

While natural gas production is booming in Pennsylvania, applications to drill unconventional wells in the state appear to have fallen off a cliff in the last three months while the number of wells spudded has been slowly declining for almost a year, indicating producers in the Marcellus and Utica shales have gotten the gas glut message.

Houston-based Sanchez Energy Corp., which holds a 95,000 net acre position in the liquids-rich Eagle Ford Shale, highlighted the performance of recent wells and said they “demonstrate the progress made in substantially derisking the majority of the company’s acreage position in the Eagle Ford Shale trend.”