WVU Study: How CNG/LNG Vehicles Can Lower Methane Emissions
Researchers at West Virginia University have just published a new study that looks at how to reduce methane emissions from LNG (liquefied natural gas) and CNG (compressed natural gas) fleet vehicles in coming years. Today’s heavy-duty natural gas fueled fleet is less than two percent of the total fleet. However, in the next 20 years, the heavy-duty truck fleet is expected to undergo a massive change–to as much as 50% of those vehicles powered by natural gas. That is a HUGE number! And potentially a huge new market for Marcellus/Utica gas! Natgas has a lot of advantages over diesel fuel, but folks are concerned over the mythical global warming potential of methane leaking into the atmosphere. Hence this study which looks at ways to prevent that…
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The Utica Shale’s economic impact on Ohio has been nothing short of “staggering.” In fact the shale revolution has fundamentally changed the United States over the past 10 years. But nowhere is it more obvious than in the Buckeye State. Our friends at Energy in Depth have assembled the results of several research studies of just how much shale has impacted Ohio, and summarized it in a handy infographic download (below). The short version is this: through the first quarter of 2016, if you add the number all up thus far, the “upstream” (drilling) industry in Ohio has invested a whopping $39.2 billion. Amazing! But that’s not all. The “midstream” (pipeline) industry has invested $13.7 billion. But wait! There’s more! The downstream (petrochemicals) industry has invested, so far, $15.3 billion. And there’s far more downstream investment coming, especially if/when PTT Global Chemical decides to move forward with building a $5 billion ethane cracker facility in Belmont County. When you add it all up, the Utica industry has invested $68.2 billion SO FAR. And that’s all private money–not taxpayer money. In fact, millions of dollars have flowed into communities from taxes on the industry. It’s truly hard to put into words just how big a deal this is…
The Oil and Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, led by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and North America’s Building Trades Unions, released a study this week on union pipeline employment across the county. The study outlines the many (many!) different types of jobs involved in building pipelines. You may think it’s just welders and their assistants. No way. It’s FAR more than that. Skilled tradespeople that work on pipelines include: boilermaker, carpenter, electrician, instrumentation technician, insulator, ironworker, construction laborer, millwright, operator, painter, scaffold builder, welder, and plumber, pipefitter, and steamfitter. Of special interest, however, are four occupations that traditionally play central roles in pipeline crews. Three are among the trades listed above: operators (i.e. operating engineers), construction laborers, and plumbers/pipefitters/steamfitters. The fourth is “drivers,” the occupation responsible for moving people and equipment around and between job sites. Now that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a quorum, pipeline projects will start getting approved and all of the jobs above, in the Marcellus/Utica, will pick up. Below is a copy of the full report, titled “Skilled Trades Employment in the Pipeline Industry: 2006-2015″…
Pipelines make a HUGE difference in the price drillers can get for their gas. When more pipelines get built to haul gas out of an over-saturated/producing area, like the Marcellus/Utica, the higher the price drillers can get for their gas. It’s simple Economics 101. Right now we have too much supply and not enough demand. When pipelines start flowing our gas to other markets, it the over-supply goes to places where there’s not enough supply and prices go up. This is not just theory. It’s fact. Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, has done an analysis of the price fetched for Marcellus/Utica gas for the first seven months of 2017 versus the same period in 2016. Extra/new pipeline capacity has come online in the first half of 2017. The EIA found that in the first seven months of 2016, our gas averaged a sale price of $0.76 below the benchmark Henry Hub price. In the first seven months of 2017, our gas averaged a sale price of $0.53 below the Henry Hub. The gap is narrowing year over year. That 53 cent price is a 30% improvement over last year. So yes, pipelines make a HUGE difference in the price of natural gas!…
MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), has just made big changes to our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. Until now, the EIA has always treated the Marcellus (primarily drilling in PA and WV) and the Utica (primarily in OH) as two separate shale plays. Beginning with this month’s report, they are combined into “Appalachia.” The stated reason for the change: “With the increasing number of wells in Pennsylvania being drilled into the Utica formation and some wells in Ohio producing from the Marcellus shale, the previous regional definitions based on surface boundaries are becoming less meaningful, especially where the two plays overlap. Furthermore, combining the relatively small number of active rigs across the broader Appalachia region should improve the precision of our productivity estimates.” That’s not the only big change. EIA also added a new shale play to the list–the Anadarko Basin (found mostly in Oklahoma, with a few counties in Texas). Because of the addition of the Anadarko, natural gas production is predicted to jump from last month’s predicted 52 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) for August, to a whopping projected 59 Bcf/d in September. The newly combined Marcellus/Utica is projected to go from 24.3 Bcf/d in August to 24.6 Bcf/d in September, up 350 million cubic feet per day. Yikes! Combining the two regions really puts it in a different light…
Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute (API) released a new study showing that the natural gas and oil industry supported 10.3 million U.S. jobs and added $1.3 trillion to the nation’s economy in 2015. The study, “Impacts of the Natural Gas and Oil Industry on the US Economy in 2015” (full copy below) found that jobs supported by the o&g industry increased by half a million since 2011, and showed that all 50 states, whether producing or non-producing, continued to benefit from the o&g industry. The study was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and commissioned by API. Yes, it’s an industry-funded study. But hey, if we don’t do the research and toot our own horn, you can be sure anti-fossil fuelers won’t do it for us! This is solid, no-nonsense (and real) economic research. We thought it would be interesting to look at the impact of the o&g industry in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia–the only three states producing Marcellus and Utica Shale gas and oil. Yes, each of those states still has a thriving conventional o&g industry as well and conventional numbers are part of the study–but let’s be honest. The unconventional (shale) sector dwarfs production of the conventional sector. When you look at o&g’s impact in our region, you find that it created 322,600 jobs in PA, 262,800 jobs in OH, and 70,900 jobs in WV. Value added (economic impact) for each state was: $44.4 billion in PA, $37.9 billion in OH, and $8 billion in WV. Add them all together and you get roughly 656,000 jobs and $90 billion of economic contribution in 2015. From one industry–oil and gas. WE LOVE FOSSIL FUELS!…
In early April of this year the 2017 AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) Annual Convention & Exhibition was held in Houston, TX. During one of the sessions, William Zagorski and Taylor McClain delivered a talk called “Discovery of the Utica Shale: Update on an Evolving Giant.” The interesting thing is that Zagorski and McClain work for Range Resources–the first driller in the Marcellus, not the Utica. We don’t have a transcript of that talk, but we do have an abstract and the slide deck used during the talk (below). The slide deck is fascinating. It begins with a history of the Utica. Did you know that the earliest Utica discoveries were in Ontario, Canada? And that the earliest drilling done in the play here in the U.S. was done in Upstate New York–near the Watertown area? No, we didn’t realize that either. In fact, a large swath of the Utica Shale layer underlies New York State–what a pity we can’t explore it because of a corrupt dictator by the name of Andrew Cuomo. At any rate, below is the slide deck, with slides outlining where the “wet gas” and “dry gas” zones are in the Utica. And exploring how Ohio became synonymous with the term Utica Shale…
West Virginia University professor and researcher Dr. Michael McCawley, chairman of the Dept. of Occupational & Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, has been studying the health effects of fracking since 2012. Dr. McCawley launched the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory (MSEEL)–a project that drilled a test well is providing real-time air, noise, occupational safety and health monitoring over a five-year period (see 
According to one of the top accounting/consulting firms in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activity in the oil and gas sector in the U.S. went from being red hot in 1Q17 ($73.04 billion) to just hot in 2Q17 ($37.01 billion). While some in the financial (and oil/gas community) may view the weaker M&A numbers as “cause for alarm,” PwC says to calm down. “Place that number in a longer-term historical context and it’s clear that the market is still robust. The $37.01 billion of deals in the second quarter is the third highest second quarter during the past eight years. Additionally, with over $110 billion in announced deals during the first half of the year, 2017 is off to the strongest start in the past eight years.” If you rank the number of deals done, the Permian comes out on top in 2Q17, with $4.49 billion worth of deals. However, the might Marcellus trumps that. With only four deals (one of them the huge EQT/Rice Energy deal), the Marcellus saw $10.22 billion worth of M&A deals in 2Q17–top dog. Here’s the latest quarterly M&A in the oil and gas sector update from PwC…
When huge ethane crackers like the proposed Shell cracker in Beaver County, PA use steam to “split” or “crack” ethane to form ethylene (the raw material used to make plastics), it takes a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of “leftover” energy and leftover carbon dioxide (CO2). As the mythology goes, more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to global warming (if you believe in that sort of thing). Scientists have long known of other ways to convert “heavier” hydrocarbons, like ethane, into “lighter” hydrocarbons, like ethylene, using metals via a chemical process. But the metals used are rare and expensive–things like rhodium, ruthenium and iridium. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they have found a way to use cheaper, more abundant metals, like titanium, to transform natural gas, ethane and other hydrocarbons into more useful chemicals like ethylene. The big bonus? No leftover CO2 to worry about…
New York City needs more natural gas pipelines–and it needs them BAD. That’s the upshot of a newly released report from the New York Building Congress, a trade group representing some 450 other building-related trade groups with 250,000+ members. The report, titled “Electricity Outlook: Powering New York City’s Future” (full copy below) says NYC needs more pipelines built before the Indian Point Nuclear plant closes in 2021–both for electric generation (to replace Indian Point’s electricity) and because of the prohibition coming on heavier fuel oil used for wintertime heating. Interesting (and mind-blowing) fact: 81.5% of the electricity flowing in the five boroughs of NYC comes from natural gas-fired electric plants. The report calls for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to promptly approve Transco’s Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, when FERC has a quorum, which will flow more PA Marcellus gas to NYC and New Jersey. The report also calls on officials to approve Millennium Pipeline’s expansion request in Upstate. Of course the irony is not lost on those of us who live in Upstate New York–the irony being that we could be the ones providing at least some of that natural gas to our cousins in the City, if sleazeball Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn’t banned fracking. So yes, New York needs more natural gas and needs it asap, but New York has banned the production of it–so we’ll have to get it from places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia instead. Bad for us, but good for them…
Not long after Michael Krancer was appointed Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection in 2011, he “requested” (which was more order than request) that municipal sewage treatment plants still accepting and processing Marcellus drilling wastewater stop the practice. At the time there were 15 plants accepting Marcellus wastewater. Under pressure from Krancer, they ended the practice in May 2011 (see 
While we wrote about a Penn State research study today that appears legitimate, but seven years too late (see New Penn State Frack Wastewater “Study” Beats a Dead Horse), there is another recently published Penn State study that is also legit that is not yet a huge issue, but certainly has potential to be a big deal. Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences has found that invasive, non-native plants are making significant inroads with shale gas development in Pennsylvania, with negative consequences for PA forests. How so? The invasive, non-native plants are hitching a ride on gravel and equipment used to create roadways in forested areas, and once those plants take root, they crowd out local, native plants. The study, titled “Unconventional gas development facilitates plant invasions” and published in the Journal of Environmental Management, concludes that more monitoring and early detection can help put a lid on the problem…
The Potential Gas Committee (PGC), a private non-profit organization loosely affiliated with the Colorado School of Mines, performs a comprehensive study of potential supplies of natural gas in the United States every two years. In April of 2013 MDN reported the committee’s findings of just how much gas is down there (see 
We’re not quite sure how to present this news. In some respects, we want to roll around on the ground laughing. In other respects, we’re angry at the semi “racist” overtones of a new “research” paper. We’ll report, you decide. A couple of researchers from the University of Maryland’s Dept. of Economics have published a so-called “working paper” via the National Bureau of Economic Research that finds a link between fracking and more babies. The paper, titled “Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, And Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence From The Fracking Boom,” says for every extra $1,000 of money earned by those working in the fracking industry, the pregnancy rate goes up by 6 births per 1,000 women. However, marriage rates don’t go up. The researchers say that people in rural pockets of Texas, Oklahoma, California and Pennsylvania who are connected to the fracking industry are “reproducing at a rate that far exceeds the national average.” In other words, those ignorant rednecks can’t get enough sex–IF they have lots of money coming in. However, those same rednecks feel no need to marry the women they knock up. Rednecks find it perfectly acceptable to shack up. That’s the MDN summarized version of the research…