Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Mon, Apr 16, 2012

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

Exxon’s big bet on shale gas
Fortune
For Rex Tillerson fracking is more than a revolutionary approach to drilling oil and gas — it’s part of his personal history.

Water test reports leave homeowners in need of a translator
The Times-Tribune
The pages Tammy Hadlick pulled from an envelope marked certified mail on a recent afternoon held a wealth of information about her family’s drinking water, none of which she could decipher.

Shale industry welcomes military skills
Post-gazette.com
If there’s one bright spot for veterans on the local job front, it’s in the oil and natural gas industry.

Drilling’s benefits evident
Altoona Mirror
American officials only need to look at the natural gas market to find a potential solution to the prolonged high fuel prices that are sapping families and the economy.

Buell well produced oil, gas and complaints
The Columbus Dispatch
Drillers are eager to tap a vast reservoir of natural gas and oil within shale beneath Ohio, which could employ thousands, but critics say it will also cause pollution.

Energy companies: We need truckers
LancasterEagleGazette
The expected Ohio oil and gas boom is going to make roads near wells swarm with trucks like bees to a hive. It’s likely to cause headaches for at least a few people, but for others, the commotion is going to sound like opportunity.

Oil and gas industry: Tax increase threatens jobs
Cleveland.com
Gov. John Kasich’s plan to increase the severance tax on oil and gas production would be bad for Ohio’s economy and its residents.

Future geologists earn on-site drilling experience at Cal U.
O-R Online
Geology students from seven universities got an idea Saturday what to expect when they arrive on their first drilling job.

In hydrofracking debate, can science be bought?
PressConnects.com
A core issue of the contentious gas-drilling debate is centered on a single question: Can science be bought?

Obama: Time To Control Fracking
Wheeling News
The federal government likely will take a more active role in regulating natural gas fracking because of President Barack Obama’s Friday executive order to coordinate the efforts of several different departments.

Anadarko reps optimistic about Ohio
Coshocton Tribune
Drilling hasn’t started in Coshocton County, but Anadarko Petroleum Corporation officials are optimistic about the future.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge says shale gas producers must be straight with the public
Cleveland.com
Drilling and fracturing Ohio’s Utica Shale is an industrial process — and there will be problems, former Gov. Tom Ridge warned industry experts Friday.

Pa.’s Bradford county approves well fee
PressConnects.com
Commissioners in Pennsylvania’s most heavily drilled county have approved a per-well drilling fee on the booming natural gas industry.

Shale brings jobs and hope to hard-hit eastern Ohio
MarketWatch
The hardscrabble city of Youngstown, Ohio, hadn’t seen a major industrial expansion in decades. That finally changed in 2010, when European conglomerate Vallourec SA said it would significantly scale up in the region with an investment of $650 million and 350 jobs for a new pipe-making plant for its V&M Star unit.