Accidents | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Washington County
More on that Range Rig Fire in Washington County, PA
Range Resources dodged a bullet with the fire at a well pad in North Strabane (Washington County, PA) on Wednesday. We now know that a hydraulic line leaked oil and that’s what started the fire. Personnel on site tried to extinguish it but enough oil spread on the rubber well pad liner that the liner itself caught fire–essentially like a huge tire burning. Which is what caused the billowing black smoke in the area. The fire spread and consumed the rig, destroying it, and a couple of trailers parked at the site. Range was in the beginning stages of drilling the well. The bullet they dodged is that no one was injured. Equipment can be replaced–people can’t…
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In addition to release good news yesterday about record high proved reserves (see today’s companion story), Range Resources issued a second press release yesterday to say they’re scaling back the drilling budget (capital expenditures, or capex) for 2015. Originally they set out to spend $1.3 billion on drilling projects in 2015. They’ve just trimmed it back by 33% to $870 million. They’re scaling back because of the low commodity price of natural gas, plain and simple. That’s the bad news. The good news is that 95% of that money will be spent in the Marcellus Shale. The further good news (why the deuce do we always have to hear these things from Range instead of Sunoco Logistics?!) is that the Mariner East pipeline is now up and running, flowing propane from western PA to storage caverns currently–not all the way to Philadelphia just yet…
Yesterday Range Resources released an announcement with two big pieces of news. The first (and lesser) news is this: Range is trimming its 2015 exploration and production budget by 18% compared to what they spent this year. The 2015 capital expenditure budget is now set at $1.3 billion. However, the company says production will continue to increase, even with less spending on drilling. The second and more important news: Range has drilled a Utica Shale well that has dethroned Magnum Hunter’s Utica well (see 
Flaring a well–which involves burning the initial volume of natural gas (typically waste gas) or because a pipeline is not yet available to hook up to the well–is increasingly a rare event. Most companies attempt to capture even the initial amounts of gas. However, Range Resources is set to begin flaring their very first Utica Shale well, drilled about 10 miles from Washington, PA on the property of the Claysville Sportsmen’s Club in Donegal Township, east of Dutch Fork Lake. The flaring will begin on Dec. 7 and according to Range it will be really big, and really noisy…