Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Mon, Jul 9, 2012

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

Vestal, other municipalities feeling heat over gas drilling
Pressconnects.com
As state regulators and lawmakers get closer to a decision on whether to permit hydraulic fracturing in New York, heated clashes in communities where natural gas drilling may take place are ramping up pressure on local officials to take a stance.

Mitsubishi Heavy to develop low-speed, 2-stroke, dual-fuel marine diesel capable of using natural gas
Green Car Congress
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. will begin developing UEC-LSGi: low-speed, dual-fuel, marine diesel engines capable of using not only conventional heavy oil but also natural gas for their fuel.

Texas-based Company Looks to Shake Manor Township this Winter
The Kittanning Paper
A Houston, Texas mapping company hopes to go deep below Armstrong County in early-2013. ION Geophysical GX Technologies approached Manor Township last week about mapping thousands of acres of Marcellus Shale rock formations when the snow falls.

Good for thee, but not for me
Scranton Times-Tribune
Republican lawmakers who normally favor local control of everything from schools to health care have contradicted that philosophy regarding the state’s natural gas boom.

Despite state control of oil, gas, local officials keep their hands in the barrels
Zanesville Times Recorder
A pump and pipeline, snaking through forests and fields, are a common sight in Washington County, Pa.

Natural gas pipeline rights to be explored
Middletown Journal
A new natural gas pipeline will soon cross Warren and Butler counties and landowners need to know the consequences of having the pipeline buried under their property, a pair of Columbus lawyers say.

Fracking foes join forces to fight drilling in Portage
Recordpub.com
Foes of horizontal hydraulic fracturing in Portage County are joining their efforts to educate people about the potential dangers in drilling for natural gas.

Could New York’s fracking plan be limited to four counties?
Akron Beacon Journal
The Marcellus Drilling News reports that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to allow limited horizontal drilling in the Marcellus shale could be limited to four southern counties.

Class shows employment opportunities from drilling
Salem News
Tom Horton said he took a leap of faith when he quit his landscaping job to attend Eastern Gateway Community College’s shale natural gas training.

Oglebay Gas Gets Closer: Chesapeake Well Ready This Year
The Intelligencer
As the drill bit on Chesapeake Energy’s natural gas rig grinds through the earth at the Timmy Minch pad in Ohio County, the company plans to use the resulting well to frack under Oglebay Park.

Will Ohio’s path follow Pennsylvania after shale gas boom?
Zanesville Times Recorder
Not even the horses are fazed by the sight and sound of a 50-foot flare as gas is burned off in June in Washington County, Pa.

Natural-gas prices force down number of Marcellus drilling rigs
Philly.com
Drilling in the Marcellus Shale region has slowed substantially this year because of the drop in natural-gas prices, and it is unlikely to resume at the same pace anytime soon.

Southeast Pa. Refineries Look to Marcellus Shale as a Savior
StateImpact Pennsylvania
As Governor Corbett and Harrisburg lawmakers try to lure a natural gas processing plant to Beaver County, near Pittsburgh, others seek to revive a shuttered Sunoco refinery in suburban Philadelphia by connecting it to.

Natural Gas Is King in Pittsburgh – Deja vu All Over Again?
JD Supra
I was reading an article from the New York Times the other day, and the first line of the article was, “Natural gas is King in Pittsburgh.” The article described how much natural gas development is under way in the region.

Will the Left ever lose its naively technocratic romance with policy centralization?
PrawfsBlawg
The question is inspired by Jody Freeman’s New York Times op-ed this morning calling for a national law to regulate “hydrofracking” — that is, extraction of natural gas from rock formations by hydraulically fracturing the rocks with high-pressure blasting of the formations with liquid.

County Health Departments Air Fracking Concerns in Unreleased Reports
Democrat and Chronicle
In last weekend’s Gannett newspapers, we wrote about a pair of reports authored by county health officials that expressed concern with the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s ongoing review of high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

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