Sept

Houston-based Memorial Production Partners LP (MEMP) has agreed to acquire oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin, East Texas and the Rockies from its sponsor, Memorial Resource Development LLC, and affiliates of Natural Gas Partners for $606 million. The deal is MEMP’s largest acquisition to date and gets the partnership’s foot in the door in the Permian and Rockies.

The Supreme Court of Ohio has agreed to hear an appeal in a case involving local ordinances, or “home rule” laws, that pits a Utica Shale driller against a Summit County municipality that had tried to shut down the driller’s operations.

With natural gas prices increasing, a joint venture (JV) in the Marcellus Shale has announced plans to build a dry gas pipeline across two neighboring counties in north-central West Virginia.

The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) has agreed to sell more water to Gulfport Energy Corp. for Utica Shale drilling activities, as it adopts a new short-term water sales policy and partners with the U.S. Geological Survey to study the impact of future water withdrawals.

Forecasters at AccuWeather.com expect another active hurricane season this year, with 16 named storms, including eight hurricanes, four of them major (Category 3 or higher), to form in the Atlantic Basin, with as many as three hurricanes making landfall in the United States.

Citing “intense pressure” from industry and its allies in Congress, a New Jersey congressman said Wednesday that the Interior Department appears to be making its proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas wells on public lands weaker, not stronger.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who is in her second week on the job, signaled Monday that new rules governing federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) are imminent.

The FracTracker Alliance and Mountain Watershed Association (MWA) are offering free training sessions across southeastern Pennsylvania for citizens who want to utilize the mapping capability of fractracker.org, a web-based tool for tracking and visualizing data related to shale gas extraction operations. The sessions “will show people how to find where drilling operations are located and learn more about them, according to MWA, which said the tool is already being used by citizen water monitoring volunteers and community advocates. Sessions are scheduled in Washington County Feb. 26, Butler County March 26, and Westmoreland County April 30, with more sessions planned through October. Information and registration is available by contacting Melissa Troutman (melissa@mtwatershed.com, (724) 455-4200 ext 6). The training sessions are sponsored by the Heinz Endowments (see Shale Daily, Sept. 2, 2011).

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed slashing the Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) budget by more than one-sixth for the upcoming fiscal year, dashing hopes that the agency could hire additional oil and natural gas drilling inspectors.