PA’s Deep Well Services Helped Drill World’s Longest Shale Well
In June MDN brought you the news that Eclipse Resources had drilled yet another world record-breaking shale well in the Ohio Utica (see Eclipse Breaks Record Again – New Longest Shale Well in World!). Eclipse drilled the Outlaw C 11H in Guernsey County, a Utica well that is an incredible 19,588 feet long horizontally (total measured depth of 27,739 feet). That’s 3.7 miles long–all nearly two miles deep underground. It is an engineering marvel. And it’s not the first record-breaking well they’ve drilled. Eclipse holds the previous two records for world’s longest horizontal wells, drilling the Purple Hayes, 18,500 feet long (see Eclipse Res. 1Q16: Drills Longest Shale Well Ever! “Purple Hayes”), and then the Great Scott 3H well, 19,300 feet long (see Great Scott! Eclipse Drills New Longest Lateral in World – in Utica). All three of Eclipse’s “longest ever” shale wells are located in Guernsey County. Eclipse didn’t drill those wells all by itself. The company had help. One of the key partners assisting in all three world record-breaking projects is Deep Well Services, a Pennsylvania-based “snubbing” company. We’ve written about DWS before (see our stories here). DWS has just issued a press release to talk about their “significant role” in Eclipse’s record-breaking Outlaw well…
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting rumors that the privately-held Ascent Resources, which targets the Utica Shale in Ohio, is shopping for bankers to help it with an initial public offering (IPO). Ascent reportedly is aiming for a stock market valuation of $3.5 billion. Ascent was formerly known as American Energy Partners (AEP), founded by Aubrey McClendon after he was unceremoniously dumped as CEO of Chesapeake Energy–the company he co-founded. AEP set up a number of subsidiary companies to target different shale plays. One of the largest was aimed squarely at the Ohio Utica (American Energy Partners–Utica LLC). That company later left the AEP fold, under pressure from investors, and became an independent company, renaming itself as Ascent Resources. Ascent, just like founder Aubrey, went on a money-raising binge after departing the AEP fold. In March 2016 Ascent floated 2.2 billion common units (think shares of stock) to raise $500 million (see 
Last week MDN brought you news about a relatively new company called American Energy Partners, Inc., based in Allentown, PA, and their subsidiary company Gilbert Oil & Gas (see 
Huntley & Huntley has plans to drill shale wells in Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), PA. As MDN reported in June, a landowner in Upper Burrell filed an appeal against Upper Burrell’s zoning ordinance that allows drilling in rural, agricultural districts (see 
Greg Guidry is the executive vice president of Shell’s unconventionals business. That is, he’s in charge of shale drilling for the company. Talking to a reporter at the Energy Dialogues LLC’s North American Gas Forum earlier this month, Guidry said shale is “a future growth opportunity because of its long-term growth potential.” Guidry is interested in promoting shale as “a lower-carbon energy source.” He believes the way to properly promote shale gas is by partnerships between the oil and gas industry and non-governmental organizations (NGO). Guidry then used the Center for Responsible Shale Development (CRSD), a group headquartered in Pittsburgh, as the model for how such a partnership can and should be done. In March 2013, the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) burst onto the scene. It had been a closely guarded secret, the creation of a few hand-picked people from both industry and the environmental movement working together to see if there is any common ground on which both sides can agree that shale development would be safe, sustainable AND affordable. They worked hard for over a year and finally hammered out a set of 15 standards that if a driller (or midstream company or contractor) would meet, it would get a stamp of approval from both the industry and environmental groups as being a good goobie–a safe driller. In January of this year the CSSD changed its name to CRSD–the Center for Responsible Shale Development (see 
In 2014, Chevron launched the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) with $20 million to fund education (for students) and training (for workers) in STEM–Science, Technology, Engineering and Math across 27 counties in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio (see 
The disgusting corporate raiders at Jana Partners are fighting to the bitter end in their attempt to stop the merger/takeover of Rice Energy by EQT. In June EQT and Rice Energy announced that EQT will buy out and merge in Rice Energy, to create (in EQT) the largest natural gas-producing company in the United States (see 
Cabot Oil & Gas has long been one of our favorite Marcellus drillers. We are friends with several members of the Cabot team. We are impressed with their many acts of philanthropy in northeastern Pennsylvania–donating millions of dollars to worthy causes in the local community where they drill. As we’ve pointed out many times, Cabot somehow spins gold out of hay in Susquehanna County–producing something like 2.5% of all the natural gas that’s produced in the U.S. from a single county. They have some of the best rocks in the shale business. Cabot’s assets have not gone unnoticed on Wall Street, where investors and analysts call the company “a unicorn.” While the term unicorn as applied to a company can have several meanings, as applied to Cabot the meaning is clear: the company is rare, and desirable. In an Investor’s Business Daily article, several analysts gush about Cabot in light of the beginning of construction of the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. Cabot will be the main shipper on the new pipeline. Analysts are predicting next year, in 2018, Cabot’s production will increase 23% from this year. And in 2019, one analyst says Cabot production will be up a whopping 47%! You begin to see why Cabot has a reputation as a unicorn on Wall Street…
In 2015 Antero Resources hired Veolia Water Technologies Inc. (subsidiary of France-based Veolia) to build a new shale wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County, West Virginia (see 
Ahead of providing its third quarter 2017 update, yesterday Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA) has issued an update on two wells recently connected to sales. The two wells are located in Rex’s Butler County, PA “Moraine East” area. What’s unique is that both wells were completed with a newly revamped/tweaked completion design. Completions is that part of drilling a well when you frack it and hook it up to production. Rex doesn’t comment on how they tweaked their completion design. Typically, changing up completions may involve how long each frack stage is, the type (and quantity) of sand or other proppant used, the kind of slick water used, etc. Rex worked with an engineering firm to review their completions process and made some changes–and they are happy with the results. Initial daily production for the two wells averaged 9.4 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d). Rex reports the methane (natural gas) portion was 4 MMcf/d, NGLs of 820 barrels per day, and condensate averaged 70 barrels per day. Looks like Rex has a couple of winners, with more on the way using the new completion design…
Earlier this week MDN told you of the curious case of American Energy Partners, Inc.–a company headquartered in Allentown, PA that appears to have nothing to do with Aubrey McClendon’s now-closed American Energy Partners (see