A SECOND Ethane Cracker Coming to Pennsylvania? Maybe!
Last week MDN reported that Dennis Davin, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) had gone on a roadshow to three counties that will be most affected by Shell’s ethane cracker plant planned for Beaver County (see PA Econ Dev Secretary Hits Road to Promote Shell Cracker). Of course one of those counties was Beaver. Davin addressed a forum in Beaver last Tuesday. What we’re just learning now is that, at the Beaver forum, there was brief talk about a SECOND ethane cracker for Pennsylvania. You read that right. There are no concrete plans as yet, but the scuttlebutt is that an unnamed company is scouting PA for a second cracker plant. According to Davin, his agency has “heard rumblings” but “nothing more.” However, following Davin’s appearance in Beaver and the talk of a second cracker, the DCED issued a statement clearly meant to stoke those rumors…
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The Donald is coming to Steel City to talk to frackers. Last Friday the Marcellus Shale Coalition, organizers and operators of the top notch Shale Insight conference and trade show held each year, announced that they had extended an invitation to both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to speak at this year’s event being held in Pittsburgh on September 21 & 22. The Donald said “yes” and Hillary said “no.” The Donald supports fossil fuels and their safe extraction and what they can do for America’s energy security. Hillary doesn’t. Need we say more? Oh, one more thing: MDN is happy to announce we will have a booth at this year’s Shale Insight. More on that in future posts. For now, here’s the exciting news that The Donald will address attendees at Shale Insight in less than a month…
One of NGI’s (Natural Gas Intelligence) ace reporters, Jamison Cocklin, wrote a top notch news/analysis article last Friday in NGI’s Shale Daily publication about the “crucial priority” of new gathering pipelines and pipeline infrastructure in general that’s needed in the Utica Shale. Jamison made the observation that while not every operator in Ohio’s Utica Shale has shifted from focusing on wet gas extraction (concentrating on wells that extract not only methane but also natural gas liquids) to dry gas (or methane only), some of the biggies have. A change in focus doesn’t mean a change in geography. The change in focus from wet to dry is happening in core wet gas counties, including Monroe, Belmont and Jefferson…
In June MDN told you about an economic development group of business and government leaders from Ohio and West Virginia (the Mid-Ohio Valley) called Shale Crescent (see 
Last week MDN told you that ratings agency Fitch Ratings had issued a “Loans of Concern” report, which is a report on loans the agency believes companies will soon default on. One of the names in the list stood out to MDN: American Energy-Marcellus (see 
Once upon a time, before Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) made an indecent proposal to Williams to buy them out (see 
Chemists at the University of Texas at Arlington published a new study last week that indicates certain activities on top of the ground at shale drilling sites are the cause of nasty emissions–and not the fracking process itself. The study, “Point source attribution of ambient contamination events near unconventional oil and gas development” published last week in Science of the Total Environment, found “highly variable levels of ambient BTEX, or benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene compounds, in and around fracking gas drilling sites in the Eagle Ford shale region in South Texas.” BTEX compounds are nasty, and in high concentrations can be carcinogenic (cancer causing) and have harmful effects on the nervous system. The good news is that recognizing where BTEX emissions are coming from can lead to fixes. Nobody, the industry included, wants to harm workers or nearby residents’ health. We reckon this study under the category of “real science” that leads to industry improvements…
Events related to drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling.
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Marcellus/Utica takeaway capacity to Gulf Coast; the New York energy game; OH residents express concerns re NEXUS pipeline; Shell buys 2 more properties for cracker operation; bumbling EPA spills again in Colorado, near the original spill; cheezy: Duke U files $9.9 claim on McClendon estate; Weather Channel founder warns Gore may “win” climate debate in 2016; and more!