FERC Issues Final Approval for Constitution Pipeline in PA/NY
We’ve been writing about the Constitution Pipeline for, like, forever! The Constitution is planned to run 124 miles from Susquehanna County, PA up into New York State, all the way to Schoharie County where it will connect to both the Iroquois Gas Transmission pipeline and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline. It will flow some 650,000 dekatherms of natural gas per day (enough natural gas to serve approximately 3 million homes), most of it produced by Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the owners of the pipeline. In October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final environmental approval (see Constitution Pipeline Gets FERC Final Environmental Approval). Yesterday, FERC issued its final approval for the project–meaning the shovels will now hit the ground and construction will now begin. Horray!…
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On Monday, MDN highlighted a pair of stories from West Virginia in which we noted that Cabot Oil & Gas, a Texas-based company that (so far) has concentrated its Marcellus Shale drilling in Susquehanna County, PA, had drilled and plugged a well in West Virginia that seems to be aimed at the Utica Shale (and/or Marcellus) in that state (see
Several years ago MDN editor Jim Willis took a tour of several Cabot Oil & Gas well sites in Susquehanna County, PA. One of the sites was a completed well pad with four producing wells, located not far from Carter Road in Dimock (yes the infamous Carter Road memorialized in Gasland). As we stood on the pad, a pad not visible a few hundred feet from the road, Jim’s tour guide (Bill desRosiers) made this statement: “Cabot has over 3,000 vertical gas wells in West Virginia. You see these four horizontal wells? These four wells produce more natural gas in one day than all 3,000 of those vertical wells in West Virginia.” Jim’s jaw hit the ground. He immediately thought (still thinks): That is the power and miracle of horizontal hydraulic fracturing! So it sparked our interest when we spotted a story from Wood County, WV about a well drilled by Cabot this past August in WV–a well that Cabot immediately plugged. It was a “miss” for Cabot. Our questions: Was it a vertical-only well? Or was it intended to be a horizontal Utica well?…
Last week Cabot Oil & Gas issued its third quarter update. The official announcement was long on the financials and very short on details for their ongoing Marcellus Shale program in Susquehanna County, PA. We’ve lifted the relevant (short) section below. However, the company also held the ubiquitous analyst phone call and in that phone call (transcript below), we get a lot more detail about Cabot’s Marcellus program. One gem: the company is now producing 1.8 to 2.0 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas in the Marcellus. Cabot will be the first company to be officially inducted into the record-breaking 2 Bcf/d Club! Although the company plans to drill 180-190 new wells in 2015, only about half of those wells will be in the Marcellus. Alas, another shale play is now turning the head of Cabot…