Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Fri, Jan 13, 2012

The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:

Drilling Company Dealing With Landslides
Wheeling News
Already a major processor of natural gas in the local Marcellus Shale region, MarkWest Energy Partners is building a new $400 million plant and pipeline in Wetzel and Marshall counties.

Petro plant could bring 10,000 jobs
The Times Leader
If Shell Oil Co. picks Pennsylvania for the site of a job-producing petrochemical plant as state officials hope, it likely will be located near Pittsburgh about a 300-mile drive from Northeastern Pennsylvania, where unemployment ranks highest.

Vantage hoping to train workers for shale oil drilling in Ohio
The Times Bulletin
In Ohio, geographically and politically positioned to become a leading importer of wastewater from gas drilling, environmentalists and lawmakers opposed to the technique known as fracking are seizing on this series of small earthquakes as a signal to proceed with caution.

Natural gas futures at 2-year low
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
No sustained deep freeze that might raise natural gas use is in the weather forecast for the foreseeable future.

Indiana County awaits state outcome before voting on drilling
Valley News Dispatch
Indiana County planners will wait until the General Assembly acts on oil and gas drilling legislation before pushing forward with a new ordinance designed to deal with deep-well Marcellus Shale drilling near county parks.

Rail Advocacy Group Presents Plan for Area
WYFX-TV Youngstown
As many see the beginning of an economic boost from the Marcellus shale industry, a rail advocacy group wants to make sure the area is prepared.

Allegany, Garrett counties urge quick OK for safe gas drilling
Daily Record
Two western Maryland counties that sit atop the Marcellus Shale geological formation are urging the administration of Gov. Martin O’Malley to quickly approve safe drilling for natural gas.

Looking Beyond $2.71 Natural Gas
Seeking Alpha
Natural Gas prices have been declining for years. The shale gas boom has been great for servicers and consumers, but drillers have been producing so much natural gas that they’re almost giving it away.

Power plant debates end in Robinson, Washington County
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Side-by-side power plants — one fueled by natural gas and the other by waste coal — gained approval Monday night in Robinson, Washington County.

Casey tries to lure giant chemical plant to Pa.
The Times-Tribune
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Wednesday wrote to a Shell executive in hopes of persuading the oil and gas giant to choose a Pennsylvania site to build a huge new chemical plant that could mean thousands of new jobs and millions of tax dollars for the state.

Flawed numbers
Times Observer
The revelation that the state Department of Environmental Protection isn’t sure just how many Marcellus Gas wells are operating or ready to produce gas in the state doesn’t generate much confidence in the agency that is supposed to look after the state’s environment.

Natural gas is U.S. bridge to green energy of future
The Observer
I was heartened to see U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse corrected by the Providence Sunday Journal’s PolitiFact for his "mostly false" assertion "that the development of solar power and other forms of renewable energy will ‘get us off’ foreign oil." It won’t. Not by a long shot, and not anytime soon.

Shale-gas boom has Ohio making steel again
Star-Telegram.com
Thirty-four years after Black Monday–the day Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced shutdowns marking the end of the steel-industry era in Youngstown, Ohio–a new $650 million, 350-employee mill is coming to life thanks to the shale-gas drilling boom.