Wayne County, PA Landowner Sues DRBC Over Fracking Ban
Some great news to share. A landowner in Wayne County, PA–in the Delaware River Basin–has filed a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) asking a judge to declare the DRBC does not have jurisdiction to prevent construction of a natural gas well. MDN has chronicled, for years, the lawless actions of the DRBC in seizing power it does not have to block shale drilling in essentially two PA counties where there is measurable quantities of shale gas that could be extracted: Wayne County and Pike County. DRBC’s former director, Carol Collier, is a hardened anti-driller who colluded with Josh Fox in making his infamous propaganda film Gasland. Collier is gone and it was thought her replacement, Steve Tambini would bring some order and sense to the organization (see DRBC Selects Steve Tambini as New Leader, Enviro Groups Unsure). He’s been a dud–at least on the drilling issue. The DRBC has blocked drilling since it considered rules for drilling in 2010, when it put a “temporary” ban in place. Enough is enough. The Wayne landowner is arguing that oil and gas wells, under the DRBC’s charter, do not constitute a “project” that is regulated by the DRBC and therefore are exempt from oversight from the DRBC. Brilliant legal move! Here’s the details, including a copy of the lawsuit as filed…
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Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that Eclipse Resources, a smaller Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA (but drilling mostly in Ohio) has drilled the world’s longest shale well–in the Utica in Guernsey County, OH (see 
New research just published by Indiana University confirms what those with common sense already knew: If at least some of the fees paid by drillers go into the local township’s coffers instead of the county or state–people in that community are more accepting and favorable to drilling. IU questioned 453 PA residents in June 2014 (takes a long time to publish research) asking a variety of questions. The research shows that the public has more trust that revenues will be spent better by their local municipal government than by the county or state. Don’t you just love it when common sense breaks out? Of course PA’s far-left/liberal governor, Tom Wolf, is tone deaf when it comes to taxing the Marcellus industry. He wants to grab all the money he can and give it to teachers unions. PA has an impact fee which keeps 60% of fees raised local–a plan that works. Wolf wants to add a severance tax on top of the impact fee, which would create the nation’s highest severance tax rate (see 
Last month MDN told you that the Penn Township (Westmoreland County) zoning board refused to grant a permit to Apex Energy to build a DEP-permitted well pad in the town (see 
The Constitution Pipleine from northeastern Pennsylvania into east-central New York State is not the only pipeline project to get delayed. It is one of five highly important projects for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica region that are either delayed–or even canceled. What are the other four projects? Read on…
What will it take for drillers to begin drilling again? That’s a question getting asked frequently by analysts on quarterly earnings calls with Marcellus/Utica drillers. The short answer is for the price of natural gas to go up and stay up. How high? Here’s some interesting economics from Southwestern Energy CEO Bill Way: every time the price of natural gas increases another quarter ($0.25), it translates into $185 million in cash flow for his company. If the price went up 50 cents, Southwestern would reactivate two drilling rigs. Another key factor in when drillers will start drilling again are DUCs–drilled but uncompleted wells. The DUC inventory is going down–but many drillers still have a year’s worth of DUCs they can leverage before they have to sink new holes…
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. Our first interesting observation from the May report: The EIA projects that in June (the report is a forecast looking forward) that once again the Utica Shale will be the only play out of the seven major plays that will continue to produce more natural gas than it did the month before. In April the EIA said the Utica would produce 1 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) of natural gas above what it did the month before, and this report says the Utica will produce 4 Mmcf/d more than it did last month. Second interesting observation: Production in the Marcellus Shale, while it continues to produce each month than it did the month before, is slowing down. That is, the rate of decline is slowing, which means we may be getting close to the point when Marcellus production begins to pick up again. Keep a close eye on Marcellus production, because it’s the largest producing shale play in the country…
We’ve heard of microwaving popcorn (one of our favorite things to microwave), but we’ve never heard of microwaving “nanoribbons.” We suspect you haven’t either. All’s it takes is a 30-watt microwave to nuke nanoribbons and voila–drillers have a new, cheap and better way to seal up tiny fractures in wellbores. Researchers at Rice University have discovered wellbores drilled to extract oil and gas can be “dramatically reinforced” with a small amount of modified graphene nanoribbons–added to a polymer and microwaved. Think of it as nuking a tiny bit of plastic over a rock and the plastic melts into and firms up the rock. It’s quite possible there will be a microwave coming to a well pad near you!…
You may recall a few months back when President Barack Hussein Obama signed the Paris climate treaty, referred to as COP21. As we wrote at the time, the treaty is not binding on the U.S. because it’s not been ratified by the Senate (see 
Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) pushed and prodded and poked and cajoled and insisted, and finally with the help of an inside corporate raider, forced Williams to agree to a buyout/merger (see 