This post is purely for your reading pleasure and enjoyment—unless you’re anti-drilling.
Surgeon General’s Warning: If you’re anti-drilling, this post will incite feelings of outrage and perhaps momentary confusion and reflection…
Read More “MDN Discovers New Disorder: FDS (Fracking Derangement Syndrome)”
Anti-drilling groups held multiple concurrent press conferences in Ohio yesterday to demand the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) stop doing their job in regulating wastewater injection wells. Instead, the enviro-extremist groups want the federal EPA to take over the job. Whacko. Their rationale? One bad actor, Ben Lupo, dumped wastewater down a storm drain in Youngstown.
What does Lupo’s actions have to do with wastewater injection wells? Er right…Nothing, actually! Such twisted reasoning is called a non sequitur—an illogical argument. Just because one bad actor dumped wastewater instead of properly disposing of it in an injection well doesn’t mean injection wells are not properly regulated. It “doesn’t follow.” But that’s what passes for logic among the fracking-deranged crowd.
Read More “Anti-Drilling Groups Want ODNR to Shut Down All Injection Wells”
When was the last time you heard about a country bank that had so much money, it was having problems finding enough people and businesses to lend it to? Yeah, we’ve never heard of that either.
Until now…
Read More “Rural PA Bank has Too Much Cash from Marcellus Customers”
As the number of Utica Shale wells drilled in Ohio increases, so too does the need for water. Each well fracked uses, on average, about 5 million gallons of water. Some of that water is recycled, but most of it (80%) stays in the ground. Anti-drillers try to use the issue of water “disappearing” from the hydrologic cycle to scare the hoi polloi, but a Gannett article does a nice job of laying those fears to rest.
Read More “The Non-Issue of Water “Disappearing” in the Fracking Process”
Some truly amazing chutzpah from the Youngstown, OH company caught dumping untreated frack wastewater down a drain that eventually emptied into the Mahoning River (see Youngstown Shale Wastewater Dumper Faces Jail and Big Fines for background).
Ben Lupo, the owner of the company who concocted the “allegedly” illegal plan, and Michael Guesman, the employee he co-opted into participating, both pled “not guilty” in federal court on Friday to the very acts they’ve already admitted doing:
Read More “Youngstown Wastewater Dumper Pleads Not Guilty in Federal Court”
The Marcellus 2 Manufacturing (or M2M) Conference convenes this week in Charleston, WV (see this MDN calendar announcement). One of the main topics of conversation for the event? You guessed it—West Virginia will soon get its own ethane cracker plant. The talk now is that WV will get a “baby cracker” online long before Shell builds a full-sized cracker in Monaca, PA.
Joe Eddy, chairman of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association (chief sponsor of the M2M conference), is president and CEO of Eagle Manufacturing in Wellsburg, WV. Here’s what he said about a small/regional ethane cracker recently announced for WV:
Read More “Cracker Talk: WV Says Small/Regional Ethane Cracker on the Way”
As part of the West Virginia Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act passed and signed into law in December 2011, the state legislature directed the WV Dept. of Environment Protection to conduct several studies. One of those studies, due by Dec. 31, 2012, was the Impoundment and Pit Safety Study. The study was done on Dec. 17, but only recently released to the public (February 15, 2013).
Details are now emerging from the study (full copy of the study is embedded below), including a warning there may be problems with the way oil and gas drillers are building waste pits for shale drilling, and with how state inspectors are checking them:
Read More “WVU Study Finds Potential Problems with Frack Wastewater Pits”
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection and elected officials want Marcellus drillers to help them with a big problem in the state: acid mine drainage. To solve two “problems” at once—lessen the amount of acid mine water that drains into PA waterways and supply water for fracking—PA encourages drillers to use acid mine water with the Environmental Good Samaritan Act and with a Consent Order and Agreement (see PA Wants Drillers to Use Acid Mine Water in Fracking – Will They?). PA’s efforts have started to pay off. Seneca Resources and at least 10 other drillers have started to use acid mine water for fracking.
However, just like a bad Western movie, extremist environmental organizations have ridden in to ruin the day. Legislation to encourage more use of acid mine water for fracking was recently introduced by a Democrat (!) Senate member. PennEnvironment and other “environmental activists” have sidelined the legislation…
Read More “PA Enviro Groups Oppose Using Acid Mine Water for Fracking”
Are anti-drilling one-percenters like Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and Susan Sarandon breaking the law because they haven’t registered as lobbyists in New York State? According to the AP, maybe…
Read More “Are Celebrities Breaking NY Law in Anti-Fracking Activities?”
A very small spill (about 40 barrels, or 1,680 gallons) of recycled fracking water with no chemical additives in it was spilled in Cross Creek County Park (Washington County), PA on Feb. 12 by Range Resources. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection has issued Range a notice of violation and is investigating…
Read More “Range Gets Violation Notice for Wastewater Spill in SW PA”
Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan announced last week that he and Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson have founded the “Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Export Working Group” for the 113th Congress. The purpose of the group is to encourage the Obama administration (specifically the Dept. of Energy) to get off it’s collective rear-end and start approving some of the many requests for permits to export natural gas.
Congressman Ryan’s press announcement:
Read More “OH Congressmen Form LNG Working Group to Encourage Exports”
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has identified three large-scale groundwater supply sources along the Susquehanna River in Broome and Chenango counties (New York State) in an announcement about a newly completed study (full copy of the study is embedded below). The USGS says these three potential groundwater supply locations are in areas where there may be future shale gas drilling activities.
Essentially, the USGS has provided the drilling industry and regulators at the DEC and SRBC with a helpful “best places to get water for fracking” guide…
Read More “USGS: Best Places in NY Southern Tier to Get Water for Fracking”
For the second time since the Utica Shale drilling boom began, the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management (DOGRM) has issued a forced pooling order (in Carroll County). In Ohio it’s called a “unitization order.” No matter what you call it, it means that the driller—Chesapeake Energy—will be allowed to drill under someone’s property that doesn’t want it because a majority of the surrounding property (88% in this case) is leased and the property in question is needed to complete a drilling unit.
Not only is this news because it’s only the second unitization order issued for Utica Shale drilling, it’s news because in this case DOGRM is not forcing Chesapeake to pay a leasing bonus to the reluctant landowner—a change from the first unitization order:
Read More “2nd Forced Pooling Order in OH Utica, Landowner Gets No Bonus”
Yesterday, GreenHunter Water announced they have purchased a 10.8 acre barge terminal site in Wheeling, WV that sits along the Ohio River. GreenHunter plans to convert the former gasoline storage facility into a shale wastewater handling and storage facility that will recycle wastewater so drillers can reuse it, or ship it by barge to other locations (like injection wells) for disposal. The GreenHunter announcement raises a number of questions and observations. MDN will add its analysis below.
First, the announcement from GreenHunter issued yesterday:
Read More “GreenHunter Buys Barge Terminal in Wheeling for Frack Wastewater”
This is not a story about the Marcellus/Utica per se, but it has a direct bearing on landowners (how big their royalty checks are) and the drilling industry (whether or not they’re willing to sink a hole) in Appalachia.
The enormous success of the shale drilling industry has been its own worst enemy in one respect: Demand for natural gas as not kept pace with the enormous flood of new supplies, and that has led to a commodity price “collapse” since 2011. Even though domestic supplies of natural gas are now at an all-time high, prices are once again inching up and it’s expected the commodity price will hit $4 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) sometime this year—perhaps this summer. Why? The switch from coal to natgas in electric power generating plants…
Read More “NatGas Prices Inching Higher, $4 Mcf This Summer?”
Carrizo Oil & Gas temporarily lost control of a Marcellus Shale gas well they were fracking in Wyoming County, PA on Wednesday. The company was in the 23rd stage Wednesday about 6:00 pm when wastewater and brine started to flow at a rate of about 800 gallons per minute—too fast to control. The concern was that natural gas (methane) would start pouring out of the hole too, so Carrizo and a specialty well control crew worked through the night and by early Thursday had the problem contained, and by Thursday afternoon they had the well capped. No methane was released into the atmosphere and the wastewater was contained.
During the episode three families that lived within 1,500 feet of the well were evacuated as a precaution. They returned on Thursday. Here’s the details about the accident as we know them:
Read More “Carrizo Problem Fracking NE PA Well, Evacuates 3 Nearby Families”