Industrywide Issues

Belmont County | Chesapeake Energy | Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Utica Shale

Chesapeake Real Estate Purchases in Ohio Signal Expansion
December 20, 2011December 20, 2011

Chesapeake Energy has just paid $630,000 for two pieces of real estate in Belmont County, Ohio—ground zero for Utica Shale drilling in eastern Ohio. Chesapeake will not officially comment on the purchases, but there’s little doubt they will build a new satellite office at one location for their Ohio drilling operations, and perhaps use the other parcel (land and warehouse) for storage and operations. It shows the serious commitment Chesapeake is making in Ohio and signals their further expansion in the area.

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Economic Impact | Energy Services | Halliburton | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Muskingum County | Ohio

Halliburton Buys Land in OH for Utica Shale Operations Center
December 20, 2011December 20, 2011

Halliburton has just purchased 178 acres in the EastPointe Business Park in Washington Township near Zanesville, Ohio. The company plans to build an operations center at the location servicing companies drilling in the Utica Shale. The new operations center is expected to create 300 jobs within the next three years.

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Accidents | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

WSJ Says EPA Using Pavillion, WY in Scare Tactic Campaign
December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

Today’s Wall Street Journal provides a devastating rebuttal of the very flawed EPA study that tries to pin chemical contamination of water supplies in Pavillion, Wyoming on fracking. Among the WSJ’s observations:

The EPA says it launched the study in response to complaints "regarding objectionable taste and odor problems in well water." What it doesn’t say is that the U.S. Geological Survey has detected organic chemicals in the well water in Pavillion (population 175) for at least 50 years—long before fracking was employed.*

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Air Quality | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Susquehanna County

Clean Air Council Targets Pipeline Compressor Plants
December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

The Clean Air Council, an anti-drilling environmental group, has set its sights on preventing new compressor stations from being built in the Marcellus Shale as one way to slow down or stop new drilling. Compressor stations remove moisture and pressurize natural gas to move it through pipelines. The two biggest concerns most people have with compressor stations are air emissions and noise—both legitimate concerns.

Compressor stations are regulated and monitored by the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also getting involved by using the federal Clean Air Act, which brings some compressor plants under their purview.

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Commodity Price | Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Marcellus Shale Means NJ Residents Heating Bills Vastly Lower
December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

Even though there is no fracking of natural gas wells in New Jersey, residents of that state are enjoying much lower heating bills this winter because of fracking. In fact, according to the AARP, using natural gas for heating costs about one-fifth of what it costs using oil. Why? The Marcellus Shale.

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Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Regulation | Statewide PA | Washington County

Gas Drillers and Townships Working Together Resolve Issues
December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

A recent example from western Pennsylvania illustrates how drilling companies and residents in PA are working together to resolve thorny issues and move forward with gas drilling in a way that everyone can live with:

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Dominion Energy | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Marshall County | Processing Plants | West Virginia

$500M NG Processing Plant in Marshall County, WV Under Way
December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

A $500 million natural gas processing plant is currently being built by Dominion Transmission along the Ohio River in Marshall County, WV. When it’s done, it will have a 400 million cubic feet per day capacity. Chesapeake Energy has committed to processing 100 million cubic feet per day at the facility. The new plant means jobs and an economic boost for West Virginia’s northern panhandle.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia

WV Has New Marcellus Drilling Law in Record Time
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

$horizontal hydraulic fracturing$ A new Marcellus drilling law (highlights of the law listed below) passed in a special session of the West Virginia legislature and has been signed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin into law. Yesterday, the WV House of Delegates voted 92-5 and the Senate voted 33-0 to pass the measure, known as the “Horizontal Well Act,” which was immediately signed by the governor.

Although it only took the WV legislature four days in a special session to pass the measure, in reality, it has taken most of this year to draft, tweak and alter the language of the bill to prepare it ahead of the special session.

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Accidents | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County

New Report Says No Health Threats from Spills in Dimock PA
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

In December 2009, Dimock Township (PA) resident Scott Ely, an employee of Cabot Oil & Gas drilling subsidiary GasSearch Drilling Services, made claims of hidden or ignored spills, leaking pits and shoddy practices to both state environmental regulators and Cabot officials. Ely identified 11 sites where he said such problems had occurred. Cabot contracted with URS Corp. to investigate the claims and either prove or disprove them. A final URS report has just been issued which says it found nothing in the streams, ponds and soil it sampled at levels that would pose a risk to human health.

The report (a copy is embedded below) says URS did find some substances which may indicate past spills from natural gas drilling operations, but that the substances they found do not have state-mandated limits for soil and water.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Regulation | Statewide MD

Maryland Continues Down the Path to No Gas Drilling
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

Maryland continues to skip down the primrose path to no shale gas drilling. Earlier this year, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley appointed a Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission to study whether or not the state should even allow shale gas drilling (see this MDN story). The committee is due to turn in a preliminary report by the end of this year, but the final report is not due until 2014. All indicators are that if Maryland allows shale gas drilling, it will be so restrictive and so heavily taxed, it will be stillborn. No drillers will even bother.

The latest evidence of that comes from the commission’s recommendation that drillers be presumed to be guilty of certain environmental “crimes” until proven innocent. To wit:

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Industrywide Issues | New York | Pennsylvania | Public Opinion | Statewide NY | Statewide PA

Cornell Conference: Majorities in NY & PA Support Drilling
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

Results from two different surveys on resident’s attitudes toward shale gas drilling in New York and Pennsylvania were delivered at the Agribusiness Economic Outlook Conference, held Dec. 13 at Cornell University. Richard Stedman, associate professor of natural resources at Cornell, reported the following from a survey of 6,000 residents in both New York and Pennsylvania:

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Industrywide Issues | Jobs

Study Finds Shale Gas Will Create 1M New Manufacturing Jobs
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

A new study released Wednesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers on shale gas and its impact on U.S. manufacturing finds that by 2025 manufacturers will employ an additional one million workers and will have saved some $11.6 billion in energy costs—all due to an abundance of domestic shale gas supplies. The report also cautions that manufacturers must help manage the environmental, regulatory and tax concerns created by shale gas resources to realize those results. A copy of the full report is embedded below.

From the PwC press release:

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Endeavour International | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | SM Energy

Endeavour Leaves SM Energy at the Altar, SM Ready to Sue
December 15, 2011December 15, 2011

Yesterday, U.S. oil and gas exploration firm Endeavour International Corp announced they were bailing out of a deal to buy the Marcellus holdings of SM Energy (no stated reason for abandoning the deal). This was the single-sentence press release they issued:

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Accidents | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County

Judge Denies Request to Restart Water Deliveries in Dimock PA
December 14, 2011December 14, 2011

Last Friday, Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard Labuskes, Jr. denied an appeal from 11 families in the Carter Road area of Dimock Township, PA who were asking that water shipments from Cabot Oil & Gas be restored. The 11 families, from an original group of 19 families, decided to not accept a remediation solution ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that directed Cabot to pay the families up to twice the value of their homes and to install filtration systems that would remove all methane from their water supplies.

Because of their ongoing refusal to accept the remediation solution offered, preferring instead to pursue litigation with Cabot, the DEP finally told Cabot they could end water deliveries to those families as of Nov. 30—deliveries that have been ongoing for more than two years.

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY | Taxation

NY Frack Calculator Shows Tax Revenue from Just One Well
December 14, 2011December 14, 2011

Just how much money would be generated in taxes by a single Marcellus Shale gas well in New York State? The Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA of NY) wants you to know, and has created a calculator on their website that will tell you. You can find it here.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

PA Municipal Leaders Say “No” to Proposed Drilling Law
December 14, 2011December 14, 2011

Leaders from 44 Pennsylvania municipalities in seven counties met Tuesday night to express their concern over state legislation nearing passage that would strip away most local control of shale gas drilling. PA Gov. Tom Corbett believes most control for drilling should be handled at the state level, something the drilling industry also favors, giving drillers an even, consistent playing field across the state instead of a patchwork of regulations that differ from area to area and even from township to township.

But local municipal leaders maintain a “one size fits all” is not the answer—that local leaders and the citizens they represent should have a say on which areas in their locales should be industrialized and which should not, and what restrictions they want to place on drilling activities. Their point: Who knows better the local character and conditions than municipal leaders, who answer to local voters?

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