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Michael Economides, 64, a University of Houston (UH) energy expert, died of a heart attack on Saturday. Economides was the founding director and chief scientist of the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M University before becoming a chemical engineering professor at UH. As a consultant, Economides worked for Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell plc and Petroleos Brasilerio (Petrobras), as well as in Russia and China. He published more than 300 journal articles and more than a dozen books, including The Color of Oil, which he co-authored. He also founded and was editor-in-chief of Energy Tribune, an online publication. In 1969, Economides, then 19, moved to the United States from Cyprus as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Kansas. He became a U.S. citizen in 1982 and went on to receive a doctorate from Stanford University in 1984. He is survived by his wife Christine Ehlig-Economides, also a petroleum engineering expert, and two sons.

A northeast Ohio company has plans to open one of the state’s first third-party water treatment facilities to process flowback, brine and other wastewater that collects during the drilling process. Ohio favors injection wells to dispose of its oilfield waste, with nearly 98% of all brine water being disposed of in Class II injection wells. Iron Eagle Enterprises LLC, of Liberty Township is the first to receive a third-party permit. Plans call for constructing a 14,000 b/d, or 588,000 gallon, facility in Carroll County, where drilling activities have been robust. The plant is expected to employ as many as 50 people once it’s operational. No completion date has been announced.

In a report released Tuesday on the Obama administration’s regulatory priorities for the upcoming year, the Interior Department cited revising “antiquated” hydraulic fracturing (fracking) regulations as one of its top priorities, as well as new draft rules to regulate venting and flaring on federal and Indian lands, and the valuation of royalties for oil shale development.

Silverback Exploration LLC, a newly formed oil and gas exploration company, has received a $350 million equity commitment fromEnCap Investments. San Antonio-based Silverback will use the capital to pursue and develop unconventional resource play opportunities in the United States. Silverback is led by CEO George M. Young Jr., who most recently served as president of Collins and Young LLC.

Physical natural gas for Sunday and Monday delivery tumbled nearly 20 cents in Wednesday’s trading, yet if Boston, New York and Philadelphia are excluded from the analysis, the decline comes in at a more moderate 11 cents.

U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) has introduced a pair of bills to speed up the repair and replacement of the nation’s natural gas pipelines, and to set up a funding mechanism designed to motivate utilities and states to complete the projects, with the federal government shouldering some of the costs.

Texas Gas Transmission is holding a binding open season through Jan. 13 for primary firm natural gas backhaul transportation service from Ohio’s Marcellus and Utica shales into Lebanon, OH, pipeline interconnects, with an ultimate destination to serve utilities in the Midwest and South.

Spot gas for Wednesday delivery on average fell a penny in Tuesday’s trading. However, if one is willing to assume that market dynamics in the transportation-challenged Iroquois-Algonquin corridor distort the broader national market, removing those prices shows a 6-cent decline overall.

Operators have turned to shales because that’s where the oil is. So it’s not surprising to find that shale towns are also where the money is, according to personal income data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).