Allegheny County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Merrion Oil & Gas | Pennsylvania | Regulation
PA DEP Hearing for Shale Well at U.S. Steel Plant Near Pittsburgh
Next Wednesday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection will hold a public hearing on plans to drill a shale well(s) on the property of U.S. Steel Corporation’s Edgar Thomson Plant in a Pittsburgh suburb. What’s so unusual about the well(s) is that U.S. Steel itself will be “the sole consumer of the natural gas extracted.” That is, U.S. Steel will use the gas to power/feed the steel plant.
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Penn Virginia, an oil and gas driller headquartered in Radnor, PA (near Philadelphia) announced last October it had found someone to buy the company–Denbury Resources (see 
We’re not quite sure what to make of this. In February, EQT filed lawsuits in both Pennsylvania and federal courts against two former employees it had fired, claiming the employees, before they were fired, had systematically copied confidential information from company computers and took it with them when they left (see 
Last October MDN told you that the man largely responsible for the huge success of Range Resources in drilling in the Marcellus Shale, Range’s former senior vice president in charge of the Marcellus, John Applegath, left retirement to head on over to Huntley & Huntley, to helm the drilling program there (see 
Here’s a mind-blower: Royal Dutch Shell is the world’s second largest oil producer (by market value). Yet a Shell official recently said his company wants to be “the largest electricity power company in the world in the early 2030s.” Within 15 years Shell wants to be THE world’s #1 electricity producer! And they plan to do it by using natural gas as the fuel to create all that electricity.
A West Virginia Circuit Court case in September 2017, Crowder and Wentz v EQT, found in favor of surface landowners ruling that EQT did not have the right to extend underground shale wells to adjacent properties where EQT also owned the mineral rights (see 
Diversified Gas & Oil has been on a mission to buy as many non-shale (conventional) oil and gas wells as it can in the Appalachian Basin. It owns over millions of acres and tens of thousands of wells–many of them located in Pennsylvania. Last fall the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) told Diversified it wants 1,000 of its nonproducing wells plugged in the next five years. Diversified countered it would like to plug 2,000 wells, but over the next 20 years. They ended up compromising.
Anti-fossil fuelers are once again riding their high horse “demanding” that the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County block any more shale drilling on county-owned property located near Beaver Run Reservoir. Even though CNX’s shale drilling has been going on there since 2011 with zero impacts on the reservoir and its water supply.
Last Friday MDN reported that Encino Energy CEO Hardy Murchison and COO Ray Walker (formerly of Range Resources) spoke at the Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) 72nd Annual Meeting in Columbus (see 
EQT yesterday announced they’ve hired a new Chief Operating Officer–Gary E. Gould, hired away from Harold Hamm at Continental Resources where he oversaw production and resource development (essentially the same position). Gould is being paid $550,000 a year with a $500,000 signing bonus ($1.1 million total), for his first year. His salary goes up from there. Gould’s charter from EQT CEO Rob McNally? Cut costs. Which made us giggle.
The Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) is currently holding their 72nd Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will address the event today. Cool! Kallanish Energy is at the event. They report that Encino Energy, which bought out all of Chesapeake Energy’s considerable Ohio Utica assets last year, was the “center of attention” yesterday.
In late December, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that so-called “stripper wells” can be taxed under the 2012 Act 13 law, slapped with an impact fee assessment if those wells produce more than 90 thousand cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) of gas in a single month, any month (see