BLM Auctions 75 Acres in OH’s Wayne Natl Forest for $209/Acre
Last week the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Eastern States Office ran another oil and gas lease auction for federal land on the eastern side of the country. Up for auction was 2,456 acres in Ohio, Michigan and Mississippi. Only half of the property listed for auction actually brought bids and sold. Of the 2,456 acres offered, a piddly 75 acres, in two parcels, was located in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest (WNF)–in Monroe County. That is, 3% of all the acreage in the BLM sale was in the Ohio Utica–and yet that 3% brought in 69% of the revenue from the sale: $15,720 total. However, the amount paid per acre for the WNF parcels seems to be small–just $209 per acre. So who picked up the 75 acres for a song?
Read More “BLM Auctions 75 Acres in OH’s Wayne Natl Forest for $209/Acre”

It seems all of New England hates natural gas pipelines of any kind–whether large interstate pipelines to bring low-cost, clean-burning Marcellus gas into the region, or tiny new extensions of existing local distribution pipelines (the local gas company), especially after the tragedy near Boston (see 
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Duke Energy’s plan to build a critically-needed natural gas pipeline near Cincinnati, OH, to replace an old pipeline built in the 1950s. We told you in April that Duke had, finally, refiled their application to build the new pipeline along an alternate route, with a few tweaks (see
In early November, Gulfport Energy, an independent oil and gas driller with significant acreage positions in the Utica Shale of eastern Ohio and the SCOOP Woodford and SCOOP Springer plays in Oklahoma, canned their CEO Michael Moore following allegations that he used a company credit card, and the company chartered jet, for personal uses (see 
LNG (liquefied natural gas) is increasingly a critical part of the natural gas picture here in the U.S.–and in the Marcellus/Utica–as in exports of LNG. This year Dominion Energy’s Cove Point LNG export terminal in Maryland came online, and early next year Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island LNG export facility along the coast of Georgia is due to go online. Not only that, we now see a trend of setting up smaller LNG facilities inland, not situated along the coast, in places like northeastern Pennsylvania (see
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: PA joins 8 other states, D.C. to develop regional program to cap greenhouse gas pollution from transportation; Ohio shale production spikes, and what that means for the state; How responsive will Cove Point LNG exports be to economics?; NY Comptroller DiNapoli facing heat over climate change; Natural gas industry burns for more pipeline capacity in Mass.; Anti-pipeline activism isn’t generating more investment in renewable energy; The incredible shrinking credibility of the climate movement; Oil nosedives to $46 – worries about economy collide with supply glut; Natural gas producer key to Trump’s energy dominance agenda strikes new deal with Malaysia.