Researchers Look for Life in Marcellus Shale – Natural Fracking?
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 WVU/OSU Get $11M Grant to Study Shale Energy Best Practices). Work is progressing. Researchers with the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory are taking rock core samples to see if there are microbes living 7,000 feet below the surface in the Marcellus Shale rock layer that could, if present, potentially be “fed” causing them to multiply and grow and maybe even naturally frack (break apart) rock layers, allowing us to get more natural gas and oil from those layers. It sounds pretty far-fetched–but stranger things have happened! Here’s the story of looking for life miles below the surface of the earth in the Marcellus…
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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 
Last Friday during the Cabot Oil & Gas quarterly earnings call update with analysts, Cabot’s CEO Dan Dinges provided an important update on the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Although Williams is the lead company building the pipeline, Cabot is the other primary partner in the project. Currently the Constitution is 100% FERC authorized and they have 100% of the rights of way leases signed for the project. The only hold-up is the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation in granting 401 Water Quality Certificates that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. According to Dinges, they expect NY to issue those permits any day now…
Here’s one flying under the radar that we didn’t know about–until now. In the spring of 2013 Magnum Hunter Resources (MHR), a driller now focused totally on the Marcellus and Utica Shale region, dismissed it’s accounting firm. Apparently some investors didn’t like that action and accused MHR’s senior management and board of directors of “breaches of fiduciary duties and other matters.” The investors filed lawsuits in seven different courts alleging misconduct. As of June 22, the last of those lawsuits was dismissed. In fact, all of the lawsuits filed have been dismissed and MHR paid out zero dollars to settle. Yes, it cost the company big money to defend themselves, but they held firm and didn’t cave and in the end they were exonerated from any wrongdoing…
In June the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a report detailing the findings of their four-year study that found no harmful effects on water supplies from fracking (see