Highlights from 2016 Shale Insight, Day One
Day One of Shale Insight is now in the books. MDN editor Jim Willis is attending, with a booth, and had a chance to shake hands with many subscribers. A hearty and heart-felt “thank you” for the kind words to subscribers and long-time industry friends who stopped by. There is no way to sugarcoat the fact that the exhibit space (number of exhibitors) is much smaller this year than in past years. However, you just can’t replace getting face-to-face with customers and (hopefully) future customers. Although the event may be smaller in numbers, that’s not a reflection of the conference program. This year’s program is filled with terrific speakers. Jim had a chance to listen to the speakers during the main sessions in the morning and at lunch. They were some of the best he has heard in attending Shale Insight over the past five years–and that’s no exaggeration. Without a doubt the speaker from Day One grabbing the most headlines was Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources and one of the drillers who figured out how to frac (with no “k”, we’ll explain below). Below are highlights only–pickings from the things Jim heard on Day One. We hope, at some point, to bring you the PowerPoint presentations and perhaps even videos for some of the talks–we’re working on it. In the meantime, here are brief highlights, things that caught our fancy, from the first day…
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One of the interesting tidbits to come out of yesterday’s first day of the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh was an off-the-cuff remark from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s special assistant for infrastructure, Yesenia Bane, who said that Gov. Wolf is “willing to talk” with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ask him to approve the Williams Constitution Pipeline project in the Empire State. Bane said Wolf has met with Williams and other stakeholders in the Constitution project, and apparently Wolf was impressed enough that he’s willing to add his own voice to those calling for an approval of the Constitution. Democrat on Democrat. Mano a mano. Should be interesting, if Wolf ever gets up the nerve to do it…
Canadian driller and midstream company Epsilon Energy had a shareholder rebellion in 2013 and threw out the sitting board of directors (see 
You may recall that TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal to pipe natural gas from Canada’s West Coast to the East Coast in order to fend off cheap supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas that will flow into Canada when/if the NEXUS and Rover pipelines get built (see 
For the gazillionth time, PennEast Pipeline is addressing the lie spread by opponents that “most a that thar gas will get exported overseas.” Virulent anti-drillers try to whip up opposition to the pipeline any way they can, including spreading the lie that PennEast gas will not stay local and benefit local residents. The single counter-argument that utterly destroys that lie is this: In order to export gas, PennEast would first have to apply for and receive permission from the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Guess what? PennEast has not (nor is going to) apply to the DOE for export permission, as they indicate in the following Letter to the Editor…
The Saudis sure didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2014 Saudi Arabia and their toadies in OPEC declared open war on the American shale industry. The aim was to bankrupt our shale drillers by pumping so much oil for so cheap, that our small potatoes drillers would go out of business. The thinking was that the Kingdom could outlast our private companies–for years if necessary. And sure enough, some of our o&g companies have gone bankrupt–nearly 100 of them since 2015. But here’s what happened along the way–the unintended consequence. Good old American ingenuity kicked in and our companies innovated–figured out how to drill for less money and get even more oil (and gas) out of the ground while doing it. That is, the Saudis’ action in trying to bury us was to make us better and stronger. One of the major ways we became better and stronger was through the lowly grain of silicon–as in sand. Can anyone say, “mega-frack”?…