Susquehanna County Residents Love Burning Locally Produced Gas
Susquehanna County, PA, which sits just across the border from where MDN is written in Broome County, NY, is one of the miracles in the Marcellus Shale. Cabot Oil & Gas, among a few other drillers, have extensive operations in Susquehanna County. In fact, all of Cabot’s PA wells are located in that one county, and Cabot produces (at last check) over 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas PER DAY. It’s an amazing story. One of the ironies has always been that rural counties like Susquehanna that produce natural gas often aren’t able to use the gas they produce due to lack of pipeline infrastructure. The entire county has 43,000 residents (11,700 families). The largest “city” in Susquehanna County is the county seat of Montrose, population 1,600 (750 households). It’s just not all that economical to run natural gas pipelines to homes around the county–even though residents live atop an embarrassing riches of natural gas. One company, Leatherstocking Natural Gas, changed all that in late 2013 when they started to run pipelines to residences and businesses around Montrose. How has it turned out? The people who are hooked up and burning Marcellus gas locally produced have high praise…
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In August 2014 the Marshall County, WV board of commissioners (a 3-person board) voted to approve a plan to build a Marcellus Shale-powered electric plant in the county (see 
In a somewhat related story posted today, MDN tackles the thorny issue of taxing pipelines in Pennsylvania. As serendipity would have it, last week Energy in Depth posted an excellent article on the financial impact pipelines are having in Ohio. Would you believe it if we told you that not only will an astounding $8 billion be spent to build new pipelines in the Buckeye State in 2016, but also an estimated $360 million in ad valorem property taxes (taxes on pipelines) will roll in to local municipal coffers. Next year. And every year thereafter! Here’s the numbers broken down by who is doing the spending and paying the taxes, and which pipelines will generate the most economic activity in Ohio next year…
It’s always fascinating for us to see which universities tout the research papers published by their professors and students, and which don’t. And which papers they decide to promote, and which they don’t. Publish a study that knocks fracking as somehow damaging the environment? That’s worth a full-blown press release and calls to the New York Times to see if you can get some juicy PR. Publish a paper that concludes, oh, the economic benefits of fracking actually extend out for hundreds of miles? Not a peep. In fact such a study was released by Dartmouth researchers called “Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution” (full copy below). The report concludes: “Every million dollars of oil and gas extracted produces $66,000 in wage income, $61,000 in royalty payments, and 0.78 jobs within the county. Outside the immediate county but within the region, the economic impacts are over three times larger. Within 100 miles of the new production, one million dollars generates $243,000 in wages, $117,000 in royalties, and 2.49 jobs.” You might think such good news would be emblazoned on major newspapers across the country. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zippo. That kind of objective research, that finds fracking benefits society, doesn’t fit the liberal bias of mainstream media. So they ignore it. If they don’t cover it, it essentially doesn’t exist. What a shame…
Yes, we know “it’s bad out there” in the oil and gas industry. We know that rig counts went over a proverbial cliff starting in January of 2015 (see the graph below from Baker Hughes). Along with dropping rig counts comes a corresponding drop in the number of wells drilled and completed. According to research conducted by the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. oil and natural gas well completions decreased 44% in the third quarter of 2015 compared to year-ago levels. We wondered if those numbers held true for the Marcellus/Utica too. Here’s what we found…
Sometimes it seems like the oil and gas industry, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica region, is some monolithic entity. It is not. Shale is all about people. The Marcellus Shale Coalition has just released a powerful new video called “The Faces of Shale” (watch it below). In the video average people talk about the shale industry and what it has meant to them–by providing jobs and income. It literally puts a face to what is sometimes a faceless entity. Who doesn’t love to hear someone else’s story?! Don’t listen to the lies Big Green pedals. Instead, listen to the people whose lives have been transformed by the miracle of fracking in the Marcellus Shale–people who thank God for the Marcellus…
Antero Resources’ chief administrative officer, Al Schopp, shared an update on Antero’s activity in WV at the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association’s annual meeting two weeks ago at Oglebay Resort. Schoop’s update was enlightening. Although Antero has cut back from running 15 drilling rigs in WV last year to only 6 this year (due to the low price of natural gas), they remain active and employ 2,000 people in the state–that’s LOCAL people. Since 2009 Antero has spent nearly $5 billion (!) in WV. Some of that money–$500 million–was spent to create a pipeline system to deliver water to drill pads so they don’t have to clog narrow mountain roads with thousands of truck trips. The company spends $20 million a year to employ safety consultants at every major Antero construction, drilling and fracking operation 24/7/365. How long does Antero plan to be a major presence in the Mountain State, and what’s ahead in the near-term? Read on…
Advanced Power Services announced yesterday they will build a second mega-electric generating plant that taps into and uses Ohio’s Utica Shale. This new plant will generate a whopping 1,100 megawatts of electricity and be located in Columbiana County, OH. Advanced just broke ground in July on a 700-megawatt plant in Carroll County (see