Range Resources Chops 11% of Workforce (so Far) in 2015
The low price drillers receive for natural gas, NGLs and oil, and the results those prices have on revenues for drillers, continues to take a big bite out of the industry. Companies, rightly or wrongly, reduce head count in order to keep the balance sheet less red than it otherwise would be. One of the easiest and quickest ways to improve finances at big companies is to cut head count. Two weeks ago CONSOL Energy laid off 10% of its workforce–some 470 people (see CONSOL Slashes 10% of Workforce – 470 Jobs Gone). Range Resources is latest to confirm company-wide layoffs. So far this year Range has cut 11% of its workforce. In May, Range laid off 41 people in the Marcellus/Utica region…
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Something really big is about to happen in the Marcellus/Utica region. Starting August 1, the Rockies Express Pipeline (REX), originally built from Colorado and Wyoming to Monroe County, OH to bring natural gas from west to east, will reverse the flow for a large and important section of the pipeline. On August 1, the section of REX from Monroe County, OH to Mexico, MO will reverse the flow and carry 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Utica and Marcellus Shale gas to the Midwest, including to the greater Chicago area. This flow reversal has the power to a) increase prices northeast drillers receive for their natural gas, and b) lower the cost of natural gas for consumers (and industrial companies, and electric generating plants, etc.) in places like Chicago. It is a win/win scenario. It is so important, and will have such a profound affect on natgas prices in the Midwest, that our friends at NGI’s Daily Gas Price Index have created a “REX Tracker”–a free daily chart updating the price of natural gas along the REX’s Zone 3 section…
What could of been a valuable research project by a Stanford University researcher is, instead, just more “fracking maybe/might/could/possibly affect groundwater” headline grabber. Stanford environmental scientist Dr. Rob Jackson, a seasoned researcher, set out to determine at what depths is fracking safe and does not affect groundwater (“The Depths of Hydraulic Fracturing and Accompanying Water Use Across the United States” — abstract below). The press release describing the research attempts to redefine any shale well drilled and fracked at less than one mile down as a “shallow” well. This is an inaccurate characterization. From the release: “The most recent such study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, finds that at least 6,900 oil and gas wells in the U.S. were fracked less than a mile (5,280 feet) from the surface, and at least 2,600 wells were fracked at depths shallower than 3,000 feet, some as shallow as 100 feet. This occurs despite many reports that describe fracking as safe for drinking water only if it occurs at least thousands of feet to a mile underground, according to Jackson.” If a well was drilled at 3,000 feet down, that’s still 2,000-2,500 feet below water aquifers–a quarter of a mile of solid rock between the two! Not to mention that 2,600 wells out of 44,000 wells Dr. Jackson studied is a puny 6% of the total–a very small percentage. In other words, the vast majority of shale wells drilled are a mile or more under the surface. Interestingly, for all of the talk about “shallow” wells and the potential dangers of fracking, Dr. Jackson’s study “has not found evidence that frack water contaminants seep upward to drinking-water aquifers from deep underground”…
This sounds like something out of a Jules Verne novel. You may recall from school that Verne wrote some of the earliest sci-fi adventures ever, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. In Journey, Verne wrote about strange and mysterious critters that live deep in the earth–in rock caverns. Turns out Verne may not have been so far from the truth after all. And there’s a tie-in with the Marcellus Shale and with fracking. In November West Virginia University and Ohio State University received an $11 million grant by the federal government to study the Marcellus and Utica Shale (see 
Big news for GreenHunter Resources: They finally have two more wastewater injection wells up and running at their Mills Hunter facility in Meigs County, OH. In May we reported that GreenHunter was hoping to have four new injection wells operating at the Mills Hunter facility by the end of June, for a total of six operating wells (see