Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Tue, Jan 15, 2013

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

New York

Fracking devolves into political theater
Albany Times Union
Frustration has mounted in New York as the state struggles to finalize its natural gas regulations.

Potential Fracking Lawsuit
News Channel 34
The focus on hydro-fracking could soon shift from drawing up drilling guidelines to lawsuits.

Ohio

Trades Look for Work Building Processing Plants
Youngstown Business Journal
Members of the building trades unions think they have a strong shot at landing contracts for the new cryogenic plant slated for Springfield Township, a project that would allow them to get a piece of the $300 million project.

Wastewater Radiation Does Not Concern Health Officials
The Intelligencer
Potentially hazardous uranium and radium are some of the radioactive materials being pumped into Ohio’s injection wells, such as the 13,727-foot deep one atop Kirkwood Heights.

Shale drilling prompts session on mineral rights
Coshocton Tribune
Property owners with mineral right leases that date back 10 or 20 years, or even longer, aren’t necessarily locked out of the current revival in lease signings that grant hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rights for oil and gas exploration.

Work Under Way For New Gas Processing Plant
WKBN-27
As the oil and natural gas industry continue to grow in the region, parts of the area are seeing significant spurts in construction to provide the infrastructure that will be needed to get those minerals from the ground to the market.

Pennsylvania

Five Years Into Fracking Boom, One Pa. Town At A Turning Point
National Public Radio
The natural gas fracking boom has sped up life in Towanda, Pa. There are positives and negatives to that fact – Towanda’s unemployment rate stayed low throughout the recession, but its crime rate jumped, too.

West Virginia

Kessler Expects Bold Decisions From Tomblin
Wheeling News
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has the opportunity to take the state in a “bold” new direction, Senate President Jeff Kessler believes.

National

Natural Gas Is All About Marcellus
Seeking Alpha
Since 2011, Natural Gas bulls have been pointing to a decrease in production of NG, but stubborn production has refused to come down. It even increased despite drill rigs numbers dropping by half while prices dropped by 65%.

Dueling Documentaries: FrackNation gives the counter-argument to the anti-fracking Gasland
American Thinker
FrackNation is an independent documentary that recently premiered in New York City’s Chelsea Clearview Cinema.

Deroy Mudock: Regulators find nothing scary about fracking
Evansville Courier & Press
If frackophobes are to be believed, natural gas fracking is the most frightful environmental nightmare since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down after an earthquake and tsunami.

Oil Industry Beats Buffett in Railroad Investments Surge: Energy
Bloomberg
North American energy companies are starting to invest more in railroad terminals than the railroads themselves.

Solving the Natural Gas Industry Triangle
Motley Fool
The NG industry has become a victim of the “chicken or egg” issue. Which will come first: NG vehichles, or the fueling stations needed to power them?

What Does Another Mild Winter Mean for Natural Gas?
Motley Fool
Natural gas production companies can’t seem to catch a break. Despite more successful drilling and production numbers in 2012, lack of demand sank spot prices to 12-year lows.

Shale Gas Will Fuel a U.S. Manufacturing Boom
MIT Technology Review
Chemical producers abandoned the U.S. in droves. Cheap natural gas is luring them back.