An Answer to “How Much Gas Will My Marcellus Well Produce?”
9/12/16: See an update to this article at the bottom, offered by a major Marcellus/Utica producer.
People always want to know, how much natural gas will the well drilled on my property produce? And tangentially, how much money am I going to make? There are consultants and (very) rough back-of-the-envelope methods for calculating how much a well will produce. However, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin researched the issue, specifically for Marcellus wells, and have made an amazing discovery: The estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) for a Marcellus well can be predicted based on the wells initial production, and the EUR prediction will have “surprising accuracy.” The authors do offer a general, overall average EUR for the over 5,000 wells they analyzed: 3.9 billion cubic feet, or Bcf, of production over the life of the well. But the specific well on your property can only be estimated by looking at its initial production. Here’s some of the highlights from their research…
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In April 2015 Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) subsidiary filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build 8.2 miles of new looping pipeline in Tioga County, PA and beef up two compressor stations in Bradford County, PA. The $142 million project is called the Susquehanna West Project. The project will increase capacity along a section of the TGP, bumping it up by 145 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d). All of the extra capacity is spoken for by Statoil and the wells they’ve drilled in NEPA. Good news: On Tuesday FERC issued their approval for the project, which means construction will begin in January 2017…
Over the years, MarkWest Energy, now a part of MPLX, has built a number of natural gas processing plants in Wetzel County, WV, collectively called the Mobley plant. In September 2014 MarkWest signed a contract with paving and construction company J.F. Allen to design and build a retaining wall so MarkWest could then build the Mobley V plant (in Smithfield). MarkWest says, in a lawsuit they’ve filed against J.F. Allen and other subcontractors, that they didn’t do the job right and it resulted in long delays and millions of dollars in extra costs for MarkWest. Which MarkWest is now trying to recover, requesting a jury trial…
Virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see 
Williams continues to tread water as it is under assault by corporate raiders who want to toss out Williams management, fire a bunch a people and sell the company. We’ve chronicled the chaos endlessly (
For some time now we’ve been tracking progress with an LNG export plant planned for the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, the Bear Head LNG project. Of all the Canadian LNG export projects that will export Marcellus gas, Bear Head seems to have the most momentum. The project has received most (if not all) of the necessary permits it needs to proceed. The most recent regulatory hurdle was a greenhouse gas approval from Nova Scotia, issued in July (see 
Residents in Wilmot Township (Bradford County), PA are mad as hell over shorted royalty checks–and they aren’t taking it anymore. Yesterday Wilmot Township’s three supervisors passed a resolution demanding, “production be discontinued from wells where landowners are having their royalty checks diminished to nothing or nearly nothing.” That is, they want to block natural gas production from existing shale wells drilled in a town smack in the middle of one of the most-drilled places in Pennsylvania. We’ve long chronicled the fight between landowners and some (certainly not all) drillers who are screwing them out of royalty payments by claiming inflated post-production costs. The issue first came to prominence with claims by landowners signed with Chesapeake Energy, who claimed Chessy had cut a sweetheart deal with its former midstream company (Access Midstream) whereby Access bumped up its charges for piping gas which Chesapeake claimed as an expense and deducted from royalty checks, and then Access turned around and invested big money into the old mothership company (see 
We scored a copy of a refreshingly honest (blunt) assessment of the Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania. The letter was written by the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s vice president of government affairs, James Welty. It’s dated August 29 and was written and sent to all Pennsylvania legislators in both the House and Senate. The legislators have been enjoying themselves on summer holiday break and are now returning to work, with just a couple of weeks left in the legislative session. The PA House is in session for 2 1/2 more weeks and the Senate for 1 1/2 weeks (final day is Nov. 15 for each). There’s not much time left to handle the people’s business in 2016. Welty’s letter to the legislators is a frank assessment of the current down market faced by PA’s shale drillers. Welty tells lawmakers that recently adopted Article 78a rules will mean drillers spend an additional $2 million per well to drill–a budget buster for many drillers. He also says PA has the highest effective tax rate on drilling in the country at 12.3%. Although PA doesn’t call it a severance tax, it essentially is a severance tax and costs more than any other oil and gas state, contrary to the lies by Democrats who lust for more money to give away. Give this frank assessment of our beloved industry a read–it’s worth your time to see how the industry characterizes the current landscape in PA…
In the past we’ve been pretty critical of the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO). It claims to provide revenue projections for use in the state budget process along with “impartial and timely analysis of fiscal, economic and budgetary issues to assist Commonwealth residents and the General Assembly in their evaluation of policy decisions.” It’s been our observation the IFO is populated with partisan Democrats. However, we have to acknowledge lately their analysis work, at least with regard to the Marcellus industry, has been pretty accurate (see 
This story is almost too good to be true. Researchers from Ohio State University have been analyzing the genomes of microorganisms (i.e. bacteria) that live in Utica Shale wells. (Who would think to do something like that?) The researchers “have found evidence of sustainable ecosystems taking hold there–populated in part by a never-before-seen genus of bacteria they have dubbed ‘Frackibacter.'” Translation: There’s little communities of microscopic critters that live in those shale wells, including a brand new critter that lives only in fracked Utica Shale wells. The hypothesis is that fracking itself created this new mutated life form. The researchers are calling it Frackibacter (we think it’s pronounced frack-uh-back-tor). We have a better name: Frackenstein! Yes ladies and gentlemen, step right up to witness this fracking freak of nature–a bacteria created from fracking itself. Who knew fracking didn’t destroy life, but actually creates it?! Below is an article about the discovery, along with a copy of the peer reviewed paper published in the journal Nature Microbiology announcing the discovery of this new fracked life form…
We’ve long bemoaned the fact that the first tactic used by oil and gas companies to stay in business during this severe downturn has been to layoff large numbers of employees. We understand all the arguments: better to cut some rather than go bankrupt and out of business, putting everyone at the company in the unemployment line. We also understand many of these same companies added large numbers of people over the past half decade in the rapid scale-up to handle all of the new shale drilling–so this is simply a “correction” or rebalancing. But tell that to someone who has lost his or her job and the families affected by it. “Hey, you’ve been made redundant” (as our British friends call it). Or, “You’re just a correction.” No, our sympathies are with the men and women who have been laid off and suffer. Some of the biggest layoffs have come from oilfield services companies, like Halliburton and Baker Hughes–both with major operations in the Marcellus/Utica. Tens of thousands have been laid off at each company over the past two years or so. In July Baker Hughes laid off another 3,000 in fell swoop (see 
A great article in Investor’s Business Daily explores the link between shale gas and the “explosive expansion” of the U.S. petrochemical industry. Part of the petchem supply chain is finding a cheap source of ethylene, the raw material used in making all sorts of plastics products. Manufacturers get ethylene from ethane cracker plants. The article discusses that link, and the reasons why Shell chose to locate their new multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant near Pittsburgh. As you can guess, economics play a major role in such a decision. Here are the specific economics that convinced Shell that PA is a good bet…
Two weeks ago MDN provided an update on the new Antero state-of-the-art frack wastewater treatment plant and landfill being built in West Virginia (see