$4.2B Invested in OH Utica First Half 2020; Downstream Explodes
Each year Cleveland State University publishes a report for JobsOhio looking at how much money has been invested by the private sector in the Utica Shale (and related) industry. CSU’s ninth Shale Investment Dashboard report (full copy below) was recently released and shows some eye-popping numbers. Total shale investment in upstream, midstream, and downstream from January through June (1H) 2020 was $4.2 billion, up 37% from $3.06 billion invested in July through December (2H) 2019. However, there are some key differences in the spending between the two periods.
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Last November Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), filed for a “pre-arranged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see 
According to an extensive article appearing in the Pipeline & Gas Journal, “the oil and gas industry [in the Marcellus/Utica] is ready to pick up where it left off in 2019.” The Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) says “2021 is looking up.” However, nobody in the midstream is planning to build new pipelines anytime soon. That spells trouble ahead for prices. Increasing production without new pipeline capacity to transport the increased production to other markets equals stagnant (or even falling) prices.
One of the criticisms often leveled against the shale industry is that shale drillers have destroyed shareholder value (the price of company stock) over the past decade or so (see 
It seems that EQT is a trendsetter. In January EQT announced it would partner with a Denver, CO company calling itself “Project Canary” to run a test on two of its shale gas pads, to prove the natural gas produces is “certified responsibly sourced.” A few weeks ago Chesapeake Energy said it would also use Project Canary (see 
Ohio’s Seventh District Court recently delivered a ruling that affects landowners/rights owners as well as drillers. In Tomechko v. Garrett (full copy below), the justices ruled that “adverse possession” of shallow gas rights expands to include deep gas rights (i.e. shale rights) in cases where shallow production “modified the subterranean structure.” According to the legal experts at Frost Brown Todd, “the Seventh District’s ruling strains credulity” and has the potential to “have unintended consequences and will almost certainly result in greater uncertainty and litigation.”
Three Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO) U.S. Senators–Susan Collins from Maine (no surprise, she’s really a Democrat), Rob Portman from Ohio (kind of a surprise, although he is a swamp dweller), and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina (more of a surprise, he’s now reverting to his swamp-dwelling roots) have voted with every single lock-step, mind-numbed Democrat Senator (all 50 of them) to overturn President Trump’s commonsense tweaking of Obama’s extreme overregulation of methane emissions.