What’s the Reason Natural Gas Prices are So Low?
Why are natural gas prices at historically low prices? According to gas pricing experts, you can sum it up in a single word: Marcellus.
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Belmont County | Energy Companies | Guernsey County | Gulfport Energy | Harrison County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Ohio
Gulfport Drills Longest Horizontal Utica Wells to Date
Gulfport Energy reports it has just completed drilling the two longest horizontal Utica Shale wells—ever. The horizontal portion for one of the wells, located in Harrison County, Ohio, went over 1.5 miles.
Here’s the particulars:
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CNBC Special Report on Natural Gas and Shale Fracking
A CNBC “special report” asks the question: Who’s Winning the Natural Gas Game? The special report is actually a series of articles they’ve posted looking at various aspects of natural gas, including the controversy over the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas.
Part of the special report includes a poll. The poll itself, although an unscientific sample, illustrates the ongoing split in opinion of the general population on the issue of fracking. The poll asks, “Is Shale-Gas Fracking Environmentally Safe?” Here’s the results as of this morning when MDN voted:
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New Deal Brings Midwest Sand to Marcellus/Other Shale Areas
Sand is a key ingredient in the hydraulic fracturing process. A special kind of sand, referred to as crystalline sand, is injected into cracks made during fracturing and stays in the cracks, propping them open so the gas can continue to come out (which is why it’s called a “proppant”). More sand will be on the way to the Marcellus and Utica region due to a new agreement between U.S. Silica, the nation’s second-largest sand producer, and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP will be the exclusive rail shipper for U.S. Silica’s new frack sand facility being constructed in Wisconsin.
From the CP press release announcing the exclusive deal with U.S. Silica:
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Wildlife Federation Sounds Alarm on Fracking in OH, MI
Sadly, we have to add the National Wildlife Federation to the list of rabid anti-drilling groups. In fact, a check of the NWF website shows they’ve drunken so deeply from the anti-everything pool they’re beyond redemption. The latest “wild” charge they’re making (pun intended) is that natural gas drilling, specifically fracking in Ohio and Michigan, will use excessive amounts of water from the Great Lakes and is an imminent danger to people and animals.
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Local Politicians Gather in Albany, NY to Support “Home Rule”
A number of New York State local government officials gathered in Albany on Monday, June 18 to talk about and support a new initiative to grant local municipalities the legal right to control oil and gas drilling in their borders. The concept is referred to as “home rule” and it’s gathering momentum with both Democrats and even with some Republican state legislators.
The event was sponsored by a group of anti-drilling groups, including Sustainable Otsego, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, and Otsego 2000. The anti-drilling group Shaleshock was also present and videoed the speakers. They offer the video on their website (click the link below to view it).
This was the press release about the home rule gathering:
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Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Shell | Statewide PA
PA Gov. Corbett Press Conference on Shell Cracker Plant
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett continues to push hard to get his package of tax incentives for a Shell ethane cracker plant passed before the state legislature goes on summer break at the end of June. Looks like it’s paid off. Word has come out the legislature will pass his proposed package.
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Utica Shale Drilling Causes Unemployment Drop in Eastern OH
The Coshocton County, Ohio unemployment rate has been stubbornly high, but now it’s starting to move lower. In May of this year the unemployment rate for Coshocton stood at 9.3 percent. It was 10.2 percent in April, one month earlier. And if you go back a year to May 2011, it was 11.3 percent. In fact, the current 9.3 percent rate is the lowest rate seen in Coshocton County since 2008.
What’s caused the Coshocton unemployment rate to go 2 percent lower in just one year? Yep, much of it can be credited to Utica Shale drilling.
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Josh Fox Releases Short Movie Targeting Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Josh Fox, a talented movie-maker and master purveyor of half-truths and outright lies in the mostly fictional movie Gasland, has just released a new short “documentary” called The Sky is Pink aimed squarely and solely at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It seems the anti-drilling movement is desperate to prevent any kind of high volume hydraulic fracturing from getting a fair evaluation in New York State—so they’re pulling out all the stops to try and make sure it doesn’t.
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Rochester, NY Votes to Ban Fracking for 1 Year
Et tu Rochester? Rochester, NY is the latest New York municipality to ban hydraulic fracturing. Their ban is for one year.Seems Cuomo’s trial balloon to allow fracking (nowhere near Rochester) and the soon-to-be-released new drilling rules from the state DEC have scared some uninformed politicians, like those in Rochester, into acting rashly.
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Just How Big Will Shale Oil/Gas Drilling Get in Ohio?
The Tuscarawas Oil and Gas Alliance (TOGA) Summit was held on Tuesday, June 19 at the Performing Arts Center at Kent State Tuscarawas, Ohio. One of the speakers was Rhonda Reda, executive director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP). She said in 2011 there were 33 shale wells drilled with 5 in production, and by 2015 eastern Ohio will see some 4,000 new shale wells, mostly in the Utica Shale.
Reda had a number of statistics and predictions for how large the drilling boom will get in Ohio. Among the statistics she highlighted:
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Iconic Environmentalist James Lovelock Loves Fracking
I love it. One of the biggest environmentalist gurus of the past 40 years has been British scientist (formerly with NASA) James Lovelock. It seems Dr. Lovelock has had a change of heart. He’s in favor of fracking and says Britain should be “going mad on it.” He also says the modern green movement has turned into a religion and its theories are “meaningless drivel.”From a story in the UK Daily Mail:
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EPA Air Pollution Rules Targeted at Senate Hearing Today
Today, Devon Energy Corp.’s environmental manager Darren Smith will testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington, D.C. about the Environmental Protection Agency’s badly overestimated data on the amount of so-called fugitive emissions that escape from a natural gas well when it’s drilled (a copy of his full testimony is embedded below).
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EPA’s Aggressive Actions Against Marcellus Drillers
An attorney writing on the JD Supra legal website says it’s not just the imagination of oil and gas drillers in the Marcellus Shale region—the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) really is out to get them. He proceeds to use statistics to show the rapid escalation in citations coming from the EPA since 2010.
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Wall Street Big Money Targets Companies that Frack
Three activist investor groups, all of them anti-drilling, are trying to use the influence of that money to shut down oil and gas drilling. If you have money invested with the members of any of these groups, you should consider removing your money and investing it elsewhere.
The groups are: The North American Investor Network on Climate Risk, the European Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, and the Australia/New Zealand Investor Group on Climate Change. Collectively they represent over 200 members with total assets under management of $20 trillion.
Their target for now? The discredited concept that oil and gas drilling which uses hydraulic fracturing (just about all oil and gas drilling) leads to an increase in methane in the atmosphere—so called “fugitive emissions.”
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PVR Sells Pipeline in East Texas, Concentrating on Marcellus
Penn Virginia Resource Partners (PVR), a midstream company, yesterday announced it’s selling off a small natural gas gathering system and processing plant in east Texas to DCP Midstream Partners for $63 million. The reason? To concentrate more on the Marcellus Shale region (and to focus more on PVR’s other area of focus—the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma).
From the PVR press release:
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Et tu Rochester? Rochester, NY is the latest New York municipality to ban hydraulic fracturing. Their ban is for one year.