Marcellus Drilling News

Energy Companies | New York | Norse Energy | Statewide NY

Norse Energy Special Shareholder Appeal – Sneak Preview
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

On July 5, Norse Energy Corp will hold what they call an “Extraordinary General Meeting” (EGM) for shareholders in Oslo, Norway. Norse Energy’s CEO Mark Dice will present to shareholders using the PowerPoint embedded below. MDN has included a rundown of what’s in the slides.

For better or worse, Norse has most of its investments in leases in New York State, and the now four-year long delay in adopting new drilling rules, called the SGEIS, has strained the company’s resources. They’ve refinanced debt, sold off assets, taken on investors and have done whatever they can to “hang in there” until drilling finally begins in New York. The slides in the presentation show just how key New York’s decision is to Norse’s future.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Al “Crucify Them” Armendariz Goes to Work for Sierra Club
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

Where do former EPA officials go after they’ve been outted as extremist anti-drillers—so extreme even the head honchos in Obama’s EPA can’t stomach them anymore? Why, the Sierra Club, of course!

You may remember the rightful furor over comments made public by then-EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz about how his philosophy on the enforcement of EPA regulations against drillers is to find a few and make examples of them. You know, like the Romans used to do when they entered a village and crucified the first five men they found. His extremist comments, when finally revealed several years after the fact, led to his dismissal (see this MDN story).

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BP | Carrizo Oil & Gas | CONSOL Energy | Energy Companies | Ohio | Trumbull County

Trumble County, OH Update: Drilling Won’t Start for 18 Months
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

According to Terry Fleming, executive director for the Ohio Petroleum Council, Trumbull County is “at least” 18 months away from any active drilling for oil and gas.

Fleming’s update for Trumbull County:

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Forced Pooling | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

NY and Compulsory Integration – MDN Agrees with Slottje (!)
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

David Slottje and his wife Helen are both lawyers funded in part by the Park Foundation (in Ithaca, NY) to run around trying to convince local town boards in New York to ban hydraulic fracturing. They are, in a word, the enemies of landowner property rights. They seek to deny landowners who want to lease their land for gas drilling the right to do so.

So when MDN read an editorial (not surprisingly) in the Ithaca Journal written by David Slottje that makes reference to the rumored plan by Gov. Cuomo to allow limited drilling in five counties as being “devastating” to landowner property rights, it was a laugh-out-loud moment. The height of hypocrisy and arrogance to say landowner rights will be devastated by the very person doing the most to devastate them.

But what wasn’t so funny was that getting beyond the rank hypocrisy and looking at the substance of what Slottje wrote, MDN had to agree with his viewpoint—on this one particular issue.

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Altela | Clarion County | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | McKean County | Pennsylvania | Wastewater

Altela Set to Open 2 New Frack Wastewater Plants in PA
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

Two new fracking wastewater treatment plants will come online in Pennsylvania on August 1st—one in Clarion County, the other in McKean County. As MDN reported back in November, Altela Inc. will use a distillation process to purify fracking wastewater, a “green” alternative instead of chemically treating the water (see this MDN story).

The new news is that Altela is almost ready to open two new plants using their green technology.

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Blue Ridge Mtn Res/Magnum Hunter | Energy Companies

Magnum Hunter’s Marcellus Production Curtailed from Storm
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

You may or may not have heard about the severe thunderstorms that moved through the mid-Atlantic region last Friday afternoon. It resulted in 1.3 million people in Washington, D.C., Maryland and northern Virginia losing power. Some of them still don’t have power and won’t until later this week.

But what you may not realize is that the same storm also had a noticeable effect on the Marcellus Shale industry. The storms didn’t just stop around D.C.—they kept on going—right into the heart of Marcellus country. And the power outage caused problems for at least one driller, Magnum Hunter, who issued a press release with an update on the status of their operations in the region.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Statewide WV | West Virginia

The Inverse Relationship of Coal and Natural Gas
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

A heartrending editorial in the Charleston Gazette tells about recent massive layoffs in the West Virginia coal industry. While there’s mention of Obama’s war on coal (and make no mistake, it’s a real war on coal by the global warmists), the editorial puts most of the “blame” on the rise of cheap natural gas, brought about by hydraulic fracturing of shale.

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Best of the Rest

Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Tue, Jul 3, 2012
July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

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

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