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Ohio’s Top 10 Producing Utica Gas & Oil Wells for 3Q14

Top 10On Friday the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) released their quarterly production numbers for third quarter 2014 for OH’s Utica oil and gas wells. The report shows that oil production increased 22% over the previous quarter, and natural gas increased a whopping 48% over the previous quarter. Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with our own analysis showing: the top 10 producing gas wells, the top 10 producing oil wells, and then the top 10 gas and oil wells as ranked by average production per day. There is a difference! The longer an oil or gas well is online, the less it produces. Newer wells produce more. So we show you which wells are not just producing the most quantity overall, but which wells are producing at the fastest (most productive) rates–even if they haven’t yet been online a full three months (92 days). We also include the complete list of 673 wells that had at least some Utica oil or gas production in 3Q14 in a more usable format than that provided by the ODNR…
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DRBC Uses MA Company for Water Testing, Anticipates Fracking

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) has prevented, through inaction, any Marcellus Shale drilling in its jurisdictional area (the Delaware River Basin in NY, PA and NJ). In particular, shale drilling would no doubt immediately take off in Wayne and Pike counties in PA should the DRBC allow it. There’s hope that with DRBC’s new director, Steve Tambini, perhaps a change will occur to allow drilling. Even though the DRBC has not allowed drilling, that doesn’t mean they’ve been totally inactive. Over the past three years, the DRBC has used a private Massachusetts company to measure baseline water quality in rivers in anticipation that fracking will one day happen in the Basin. The DRBC wants baseline numbers to compare with post-fracking numbers–to ensure nothing has changed (or if it has changed, as evidence). We think baseline testing is a great idea, and we also think it’s great that the DRBC anticipates allowing fracking–at some point…
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PA Gov-Elect Tom Wolf’s Severance Tax Lie Exposed

Gee, a politician who lied to get elected? Say it ain’t so! Ah, but it is. And the politician who lied is none other than Gov.-elect Tom Wolf. He said slapping a severance tax on Marcellus drillers would raise $1 billion or more that could then be given to schools (in any other context this would be called theft–holding up one citizen to turn the money over to another citizen). Wolf knowingly used erroneous numbers pumped out by the anti-drilling Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (far-left, partisan Democrat group). They said a 5% tax would haul in 1 billion big ones. The truth? At best, such a tax may haul in half that–still leaving a $500 million hole in the budget. And that’s if drillers don’t stop drilling and leave the state because they’re being bled to death with a corporate income tax on top of a severance tax (which states like TX, OK and LA don’t have). Now it’s time for mainstream media to try and cover Wolf’s lie by pretending it was a mathematics error…
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PA Dem Strategist Lays Out Game Plan for Selling Severance Tax

Payback time for the teachers’ unions. We now know how the Democrats plan to mount a campaign to dump the impact fee and raise taxes on drillers and landowners with a severance tax, and give half of the money to “education” (i.e. teachers unions). We have their game plan courtesy top PA Democrat strategist Tony May, who wrote about it in the Harrisburg Patriot-News
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NY Landowners Get Eminent Domain Threat from Constitution Pipeline

As we reported last week, it’s great news that the Constitution Pipeline has now received its final green light and construction is about to begin (see FERC Issues Final Approval for Constitution Pipeline in PA/NY). Some of the hardest work now lies ahead. Unfortunately, some landowners refuse to negotiate a right-of-way and so, just a few days after FERC gave the go-ahead, those landowners have received a “sign now or else” letter threatening the use of eminent domain, from Williams…
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OH Landowners Outside Utica Get Piece of the Action via Pipelines

You’d have to be living on the planet Mars (or perhaps Mars, PA) to not know that pipeline infrastructure has virtually taken over the spotlight from shale drilling in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Contrary to the continuing tripe that “shale supplies of gas and oil will give out any day now” that we continue to hear from certain discredited sources, supplies (in the northeast) continue to increase. And along with those supplies comes a need for pipelines. The Ohio Farm Bureau is telling OH landowners that even if they aren’t in the Utica-rich eastern portion of the state, there’s still a chance they can cash in on the shale boom because of the pipelines coming their way…
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Why Does it Take So Long to Build a Pipeline in the Northeast?

Blaine Lucas, a lawyer with the Pittsburgh law firm of Babst Calland (one of the northeast’s top energy law firms) gives an overview of some of the difficulties and problems faced by midstream companies (pipelines and processing plants), along with insight into why it just takes so darned long to build pipelines–pipelines which are desperately needed to get the huge and growing supply of Marcellus Shale gas to market…
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Marcellus Supply Chain: Pittsburgh Hydraulic Hose Supplier Sold

Powertrack International, a Pittsburgh-based company that sells hydraulic hoses and fittings to the oil and gas industry, has been bought out by F.N.B. Capital Partners, a $175 million investment fund also located in Pittsburgh. This is the twelfth such SBIC (federal Small Business Investment Company program) investment this year for F.N.B. Terms of the deal were not disclosed (private transaction, private company). Edward Condon, the owner of Powertrack, is cashing in his chips. He’ll hang around for some consulting work, but essentially he’s now out the door and a “long-time” employee of the company, Andrew Kuron, will take the helm as president…
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