Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Mon, Mar 19, 2012

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

Session Centers On Shale Benefits
Wheeling News
The possibility of revitalizing the manufacturing sector with materials produced from natural gas drilling is an opportunity West Virginia business and government leaders are seeking to harness.

Waiting to cash in
NewsandSentinel.com
Gas and oil industry officials often talk about the economic boom Marcellus Shale will bring to the state of West Virginia.

Fracturing safe, say university studies
O-R Online
Two recently released university studies have concluded the hydraulic fracturing method of extracting natural gas from shale formations such as the Marcellus is safe.

Mt. Pleasant votes to join challenge of state drilling law
O-R Online
Mt. Pleasant Township supervisors during a special meeting Saturday opted into a proposed municipal challenge to a new state law that lifts local zoning regulations on the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry.

Second Shot at Cracker Coming
The Intelligencer
Though Royal Dutch Shell signed a deal to take its ethane cracker to Pennsylvania, a West Virginia-based company is still looking to help create thousands of jobs by building a similar plant in the next few years.

Shale boom headed here
LancasterEagleGazette
Amanda resident Jerry Meldrum has put his 20 acres of land into a landowners group to try and get a better price on any oil and natural gas leases he might get.

Gas pipeline proliferation worries Marcellus Outreach Butler
PittsburghLive.com
A Butler County community group opposed to Marcellus shale natural gas drilling wants elected leaders to know it has concerns about the potential for gas pipelines to crisscross the landscape.

Questions remain after shale announcements
Tribune-Chronicle
The eastern Ohio route connecting two natural gas processing plants announced last week, including a $900 million facility proposed for Columbiana County, would run through the entire length of Ohio’s Carroll County.

State’s Shell deal trades short-term tax losses for long-term jobs
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Zero state and local taxes for 15 years. That’s the deal, plus other incentives under negotiation, that Shell Oil Co. landed to build a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant in Beaver County.