OH Utica Production for 2Q15 Breaks Record – Highest in 100 Years!
Yesterday the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) released quarterly production numbers for second quarter 2015 for OH’s Utica oil and gas wells. The report shows 5.6 million barrels of oil and 221 billion cubic feet of natural gas were produced in 2Q15. According to the ODNR, these numbers break all previous production reporting records for the last 100 years! Numbers for 1Q15, by comparison, were 4.4 million barrels of oil and 183.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with our own analysis showing: the top 25 producing gas wells, the top 25 producing oil wells, and then the top 25 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 (91 days). We also include a link to the complete list of 1,020 wells that had at least some Utica oil or gas production in 2Q15 in a more usable format than that provided by the ODNR…
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Halcon Resources, with with some 140,000 net acres in the Ohio Utica Shale, said in January they would not do any Utica drilling in 2015 (see 
A potentially troubling development in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA. Apex Energy had a permit from the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to drill a Marcellus Shale well in Penn Twp. An anti-drilling group called Protect PT filed a lawsuit against the town for allowing the well to be drilled with first requiring a full environmental impact statement (EIS)–something that drives up the cost of drilling a well. The town caved to pressure and withdrew permission to drill, so Apex also sued the town. A deal has been worked out. Apex will have to pay for and conduct an EIS, and then they will be allowed to drill. Other towns populated with anti-drillers are catching wind of it and eyeing it as a potential way to slow or stop drilling in their towns…
Welcome to Friday. It’s time for a brief tutorial on “short selling” or “going short” in the stock market. Even if you don’t participate in the stock market, you need to pay attention if you work for a Marcellus driller or other publicly traded company that sells to or is part of the industry. You also need to pay attention if you are leased with a Marcellus driller. A company’s stock price is key to the value of the company–something called its market capitalization. The more a company is worth (the more “market cap” it has) the more it can borrow when it needs to for things like drilling new wells. A bigger market cap also means a company can borrow money at a lower interest rate (more collateral/value, less risk). Let’s take a look at the recent market gyrations and how those gyrations have encouraged something called short selling of Marcellus-related stocks…
A hilarious “Boo! Scared Ya” report has just been issued by the brainiacs at Penn State that says Pennsylvanians are all going to fry by 2050 because of mythical man-made global warming. Never mind these are the same people who have made the same predictions going back 25 years (average temps haven’t gone up now for 18 years and counting). Never mind these are the same people who can’t predict the weather next week, let alone 35 years from now. We’re just supposed to believe them because they have letters after their names, supposedly indicating they’re smart. One person has fallen for this erroneous garbage: the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. Unfortunately Quigley has the power to make drillers’ lives miserable by enacting draconian regulations to control their activities because he believes in the fairy tale of global warming. That not only makes him stupid, it makes him dangerous…
In May, MDN told you the maddening news that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had, once again, illegally grabbed power not granted to them under the Constitution by redefining what are “waters of the United States” (see 
The idiotic governor of Hawaii, David Ige, recently signed legislation that will bankrupt his state down the road. Ige, with an irrational hatred of fossil fuels, including clean-burning natural gas, signed a bill in June that requires the state to use electricity derived 100% from so-called renewable sources by 2045–just 30 short years from now. This week Ige said that does not include the use of natural gas. Good luck with that. Germany is trying to transition to 100% renewable electricity and their electric rates are through the roof, stifling business and driving companies out of the country because they can’t afford to operate there. That’s the future for Hawaii. In particular Ige dissed LNG this week saying that even though it’s cheap and getting cheaper, “it is a fossil fuel.” There you have it. Fossil fuel prejudice on full display. We once coined the phrase “fracking derangement syndrome” or FDS for anti-drillers in the northeast. Seems to fit Gov. Ige too. Here’s the thing: the pen Ige used to sign the bill into law was made from and with the use of fossil fuels (plastics). His clothes? Made from plastic fibers, i.e. fossil fuels. The shoes on his feet? Partially made out of fossil fuels, and the energy used to make them came from fossil fuels. Same for the chair he sat in, the desk he used, the cameras snapping his picture, the car he drove to work, the materials used to build the governor’s mansion…all done with fossil fuels. It is IRRATIONAL to hate and restrict the use of fossil fuels because of an idiotic belief in man-made global warming. When will people like Gov. Ige wake up? His dangerous and twisted belief has just sentenced Hawaii to become little more than a third world country economically. Hopefully a future governor will reverse course…