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The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has completed a final environmental review that will serve to support decision-making with respect to oil and natural gas lease sales scheduled in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) over the next five years.

The University at Buffalo (UB) will not change the operations of the Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), despite a controversy over an SRSI hydraulic fracturing (fracking) study that threatened to overshadow its conclusions, UB said.

It will add to the hydrocarbon-rich state’s mitigation of flared associated natural gas supplies in the Bakken Shale play.

Dallas-based natural gas vehicle (NGV) conversion company BAF Technologies has acquired Michigan-based automotive emissions control company ServoTech Engineering Inc., which will continue to operate under its current president as a BAF subsidiary. Terms of the acquisition were not released. Headed by Hamid Servati, ServoTech is a Ford Motor Co.-qualified calibration modifier. BAF was the first compressed natural gas converter recognized as Ford-qualified. ServoTech’s relationship with Ford should support BAF in developing engine calibrations more efficiently, enabling it ultimately to receive California and federal air quality approvals faster than in the past, according to BAF President John Bacon. BAF is a wholly owned subsidiary of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a provider of fueling infrastructure and natural gas for NGVs.

Operators in Pennsylvania spud fewer Marcellus Shale gas wells last month than the year before, shifted their focus to counties in wetter areas of the play and saw turnover at the top in terms of most wells spud, data from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) shows.

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.

Information gathered from six separate natural gas development datasets — all currently available on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) website — have been formatted into a single geodatabase file by the Center for Biodiversity and Ecosystems (CBE) at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which plans to make the information available through an interactive online map by the end of the year.

Natural gas, particularly unconventional resources, will continue to be a major focus for ExxonMobil in the coming decades, CEO Rex Tillerson told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in Dallas on Wednesday.

In an order issued last week for Chestnut Ridge Storage LLC, FERC provided guidance on when it will (and won’t) grant requests to extend deadlines for completing projects.