Penn State Claims Link Between Fracking & Earthquakes, Without Research
What has happened to one of the world’s finest research universities? A press release issued yesterday by Penn State touts their participation in helping set up a seismic monitoring system throughout Pennsylvania. In the announcement, Penn State researchers openly admit this about a series of tiny quakes in western PA that couldn’t be felt at the surface: “We have not done enough analysis of the data to make any conclusions yet, but there is a correlation spatially and temporally between the fracking and the earthquakes.” In other words–“We haven’t actually done the research, but we’re going to say there’s a connection between fracking and earthquakes–because we feel like it.” That’s not science–that’s politics. Real scientists observe first, then conclude. Penn State is reversing that order–they already have their conclusions, now it’s just a matter of warping the observations to fit their conclusions. Sad…
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We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s draconian, so-called “Clean Power Plan” (
Fairmount Santrol is a proppant manufacturer/supplier headquartered in Ohio. Proppants are things like sand and ceramic beads used to “prop open” tiny fractures created in hydraulic fracturing of shale oil and gas wells. In other words, Fairmount Santrol is a regional sand supplier for shale drillers–and a good proxy to understand what’s happening (or not happening) in our neck of the woods when it comes to drilling. If drillers aren’t drilling as much, that will show up first in the balance sheets of companies like Fairmount. And so it does. Fairmount reports in their first quarter 2016 update that revenues in 1Q16 were down 52% from 1Q15. But you can’t automatically assume that means there was half the drilling one year later. Fairmount also reports the volume of sand sold was down just 8% from 1Q15 to 1Q16. Why the discrepancy between revenue and volume? Fairmount doesn’t say, but we think we know: drillers have been putting the squeeze on supply chain companies like Fairmount, forcing them to deeply discount their prices…
As MDN has previously noted, Atlas Energy has been in financial trouble for some time. Just a few years after the company sold two different tranches of their vast Marcellus assets for a cumulative $12 billion, the company’s stock was tossed off the New York Stock Exchange and relegated to the Pink Sheets as a penny stock (see 
In March MDN reported that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada wants a bigger piece of the Marcellus/Utica pipeline pie and has decided to buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion (see 
In March MDN brought you news of an environmental Nazi confab in New York City, headlined by New York Attorney Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Al Gore (see 
Here’s a little good news, for a change. Research firm Grand View Research (headquartered in San Francisco) has just published a pricey new research report (a single copy will set you back $4,700) that projects the global hydraulic fracturing market will be worth $81 billion by 2024–in just eight short years. Grand View’s researchers say much of that value/revenue will come in the “plug and perf” (i.e. fracking) part of the industry. It will be driven primarily by two countries–the United States and (wait for it….) China. We haven’t heard a lot about fracking in China, but that country is definitely making major moves to unlock vast shale reserves beneath its soil. The Chinese don’t have to worry about silly things like getting permission from citizens–not in a brutal dictatorship like China. They just do it. Although we haven’t seen the full report ourselves, Grand View has shared some of the key, high level insights they gleaned from their research. Here are some interesting facts and tidbits…
Creditsafe USA, which calls itself the world’s “most used supplier” of company business intelligence, on Tuesday released what they call “startling statistics” about “the troubled oil and gas sector.” They are, of course, trying to sell subscriptions to their service by releasing this “news.” However, we found their press release interesting, for a couple of reasons. One reason is because Creditsafe’s research shows that the oil and gas sector contributed a staggering, words-can’t-even-describe-it $220 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015. It represents a “significant percentage” of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). The big problem they identify is that oil and gas companies are starting to drop like flies–declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What lies ahead for our economy if that trend continues?…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Market impact of 2016 northeast natgas production trends; 1,312 Utica wells now producing; mini-LNG plant coming in NJ; Cheniere ships 9th LNG export cargo; 50% of LNG exports may get shut-in; European natgas prices collapse; and more!