The Louisville City Council (Stark County, OH) passed an agreement yesterday to sell both potable and treated sewage water to Chesapeake Energy for their use in fracking Utica Shale wells. The water purchase agreement runs through 2017.
Read More “Louisville, OH to Sell Chesapeake Water for Fracking”
Writing in the Financial Post, Vaclav Smil, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and until 2011 a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba gives some sage advice on the wild claims on both sides of the shale gas drilling isle:
Tired of New York municipalities passing ill-advised bans on fracking, and hoping to increase the chances that landowners will be “first in line” for permits when they are finally issued, a group of landowners in New York have launched a campaign to get municipalities to pass a non-binding resolution that they will not enact a ban on fracking—and it’s working.
Read More “NY Towns Pass Resolution They WON’T Ban Fracking”
An unnamed driller in Ohio has asked Canadian company GASFRAC to use its waterless fracking technology to drill two trial wells in the Utica Shale. You may recall that a group of Tioga County, NY landowners with a collective 135,000 Marcellus Shale acres were set to use GASFRAC’s LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) technology to jump start drilling in New York, but the lease and royalty deal with the driller, eCORP, fell through (no fault of GASFRAC, see this MDN story).
Will GASFRAC’s innovative technology do the trick in Ohio’s Utica Shale? There’s some disagreement on that point.
Read More “GASFRAC Waterless Fracking Technology Debuts in Utica Shale”
Yesterday MDN wrote a story about a newly released study by Ernest & Young that purports to show that Ohio’s oil and gas taxes are the lowest in the country, and would remain the lowest even if Gov. John Kasich’s plan to boost those taxes were to be adopted (see this MDN story). MDN stated that we could not find a copy of that study to review the data. Thanks to two intrepid MDN readers, we now have a copy (embedded below).
Read More “Ernst & Young’s Analysis of Ohio Proposed Severance Tax”
It seems a lot of today’s news is about fracking, so here’s one more story about fracking—not Marcellus or Utica related—but important all the same. Our ultra-environmentally conscious friends from across the pond have decided that fracking is a safe technology. Take note Vermont!
From a press release issued by British Gas:
In contrast to closed-minded Vermont (see this MDN story), North Carolina and its Democrat governor are also considering adopting new legislation with regard to hydraulic fracturing—but North Carolina’s legislation would make fracking legal, not ban it.
Read More “NC Law to Legalize (and Encourage) Fracking Advances”
In a purely symbolic gesture, Vermont has become the first (and likely only) state in union to ban hydraulic fracturing. Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the law yesterday with a crowd of grade school students from Twinfield Union School who have been brainwashed by their teachers into thinking fossil fuels are evil. The ban is symbolic because there is no oil or gas underneath Vermont to drill for.
Canadian mutual fund giant NEI Investments has joined the Investor Environmental Mafia Health Network (IEHN) of activist investors calling on drillers to adopt “industry-wide standards for shale gas drilling.” (See this MDN story for a background on the IEHN.)
Read More “Canadian Mutual Fund Joins Activists Targeting Shale Gas”
This is technically not a story about the Marcellus or the Utica Shale. But it’s just as critical. North Dakota has just officially become the number two producer of oil in the United States, displacing Alaska for that spot. Texas still leads with the most oil production.
How on earth as ND become number two? It’s simple: shale and the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. What’s even more startling is that as recently as 1999 ND had zero drilling rigs and oil drilling in the state was dead. Just 13 years later, it’s number two in the nation. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Read More “Behold the Power of Shale Fracking: ND Now #2 US Oil Producer”
A peer-reviewed 52-page study released yesterday by the new natural gas institute at SUNY University at Buffalo (UB) finds that environmental problems caused by Marcellus Shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania were isolated, mostly minor and on the decline (a copy of the full study is embedded below).
The study analyzes the data from more than 3,533 Marcellus wells drilled since 2008 in PA by over 100 drilling rigs. The study makes the following conclusions, including assigning a percentage probability for how likely it is for a major environmental event to occur:
Read More “UB Study Released on Environmental Problems in PA Drilling”
The anti-drilling American Rivers, an organization with a lofty Americana name but with a hard left environmentalist agenda, issues their “top 10” most endangered rivers list each year about this time. It’s an amusing exercise because the list rarely contains any of the same rivers on it from year to year. This year’s list is no different—and of course one of the targets of the list is shale gas drilling.
Read More “American Rivers Yearly Fundraiser/Most Endangered Rivers List”
Siena College Research Institute runs regular polls of New Yorkers to gage their opinion on a variety of topics. One of the long-running topics they poll on is whether or not New York should allow hydraulic fracturing to move forward. The latest Siena poll was just released today. The full breakout is embedded below. Here’s how Siena interpreted the results in their press announcement:
Read More “Siena College Poll – New Yorkers Remain Split on Fracking”
Drilling rig counts are closely watched as an indicator of where, and how much, drilling is happening in a given geography. Last Friday, Baker Hughes reported that rig counts for Pennsylvania continue to decline from a year ago, while the numbers for West Virginia are going up. But that doesn’t quite tell the whole story.
At a seminar in Erie, PA for manufacturers and other companies interested in becoming suppliers to the shale gas industry, Marcellus Shale Coalition president Kathryn Klaber told attendees that it’s just a matter of time before Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling comes to their area.
Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Drilling – Coming to Erie, PA”
On Friday the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its results of testing for the fourth and final batch of water wells in Dimock, PA. The results are the same as the first three batches: There is and has been no contamination of the area’s water supply by chemicals from nearby hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus Shale gas wells.
Read More “EPA’s Final Batch of Testing for Dimock Water Wells Released”